


CHOICE MATTERS

by Rammygrrl



Series: CHOICE MATTERS [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-21 21:06:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 13
Words: 37,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rammygrrl/pseuds/Rammygrrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part One (Chs 1--13): Dean's in Hell and the memories of his life before he was ripped away from it are coming thick and fast.</p><p>Part Two -- The Torturer's Apprentice (Chs 1--7): Dean's the newest of Alistair's apprentices and the most favored, until a miracle happens.</p><p>Part Three (Chs 1--18): Life ain't easy for the guy who started the Apocalypse...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. of Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> **ATTENTION:** This story is an original work of fiction authored by (pen name) Rammygrrl. This story is not available or authorized for reproduction in any forum or format other than the original posting in Deviant Art and this posting in AO3. If you see this material, in whole or in part, in any other location or format, please report to: rammygrrl@gmail.com
> 
>  **DISCLAIMER:** This is a work of fiction. I do not own the characters in this story, they belong to their creator, Eric Kripke, and I am not receiving any remuneration for this work. Any original characters, as well as this work in its entirety, are copyrighted.
> 
>  **WARNINGS:** This is a story composed entirely of “triggers” so take these warnings seriously. This story contains graphic descriptions of alcohol/drug abuse, sexuality, con, non-con, and dub-con sexual situations, violence, and extreme torture that are not suitable for persons under 18. If you are under 18 years of age, do not read this story. If this type of material is illegal in your location, do not read this story. 
> 
> This story contains other material which may be upsetting to sensitive readers, including, but not limited to, the following:
> 
> Incest (parent/child and sibling)  
> M/M sex  
> Graphic, violent, mental and physical torture  
> Underage sex  
> Underage prostitution  
> Underage corporal punishment
> 
>  **STORY NOTES:** Dean Winchester's 40 years in Hell (SPN 3x16) and the entire year afterward (SPN 4x01--4x22). Three asterisks *** denote a specific memory from Dean's life as he is recalling it so the tenses will change. TV curse words are replaced by actual swearing. SPOILERS for seasons 1—4 abound.
> 
>  **FEEDBACK:** If you made it all the way down here, congrats :D I would really appreciate comments on this work -- of any kind. Good, bad, whatever, let me know. If you want to comment privately, please feel free to send me email at rammygrrl@gmail.com
> 
> This work is complete in three Parts. If you would like to read more of my work, then please comment on this one.

 

**CHOICE MATTERS**

 

**Part 1 – Chapter 1**

The first time it happened, Dean had been sound asleep. He liked to think that if he'd been awake when it started, he would have stopped it right then and there, but there's no way he can ever be sure if that's the truth, he just hoped it was. Dean had always been a deep sleeper, he slept _hard,_ like _knocked-out_ hard. When his head hit the pillow, he was gone, and he was always out of it for a while after he awoke. It was like his brain wanted to stay asleep for as long as possible and resented having to return to awareness and his difficult life. It was a bad trait for a hunter to have and over the years he'd become a much lighter sleeper, when he could sleep at all, but back then, sleep had been like a drug.

Having what happened happen when he was asleep meant that Dean's guard had been completely down, his better judgment absent. He'd been unable to ward it off mentally or physically, so he'd ended up getting a taste of something that he shouldn't have, ended up wanting what he shouldn't have. After all, Sammy was his little brother. No, actually, Sammy was more than that, more than a brother and more than a best friend, though, of course, he was that, too. Rather, in a lot of ways, Sammy was _his_ child, not their father's. Dean had essentially raised Sammy from an infant, been his primary caregiver and protector. However, Dean well knew that parental instincts could become ... twisted ... because that had been a fact of his life since he was thirteen. If a man as strong as John Winchester could succumb, was it any wonder that Dean had, as well?

Still, Dean liked to think that he would have stopped it if he had been approached when he was awake, that he'd have given Sammy a sock on the arm and told him to cut it out. He liked to think that...

Dean closed his eyes and let his head fall forward, chin on his chest, once again allowing the memory to take him over and take him away from where he was now. Its familiarity, if not its subject matter, still giving him some comfort, and he desperately needed comforting.

 

 ******* He slowly woke, feeling the hot wetness as shame at first, his sleep-drugged brain telling him he'd wet the bed or come in a dream, but as awareness continued to blossom, Dean realized that what he was feeling was Sammy's mouth on him. His annoying, beloved, twelve-year-old brother was sucking his dick.

Dean had never felt anything like it. For as many times as he'd performed this act, he'd never felt it himself. He was far too wary to let the men he hustled get their teeth anywhere near his cock, and Dad was a taker, not a giver.

Sammy's hand slowly crept up his leg, hesitantly, like he wanted to touch him but was afraid to. His mouth, however, was much more bold, and Dean felt his brother's lips enclose the head of his cock, tongue-tip exploring the mouthful, then his whole tongue licking him. He shivered and Sammy froze. Dean slid a hand under the covers and cupped the back of Sammy's head, pulling him towards him slightly, then stroked his soft hair. Their father wouldn't catch them. Dean could hear the shower running.

Encouraged, Sammy continued his explorations until Dean was on the verge of spurting in his little brother's mouth, but then the shower shut off. Stifling a frustrated groan, Dean gently pushed Sammy's head away and said “Dad” softly. Sammy quickly slid out from under the covers and back into his own bed without a word, just a brief look. Sammy's eyes were full of questions and Dean knew he had to answer them. Dean nodded, acknowledging that they'd talk as soon as they got a moment away from Dad, then the bathroom door opened and their father emerged from the steamy room, still toweling himself dry.

“Up and at 'em, boys. We've still got at least half a day's drive,” John said, then rooted in his duffle bag for his clothes.

“Yes, sir,” Dean replied and got up. “Do I have time for a shower?” he asked, needing to finish what his brother had started.

“You can have ten minutes, but there's probably not much hot water left.”

Didn't matter. Dean wanted the privacy more than the shower anyway. “I'll deal,” he said.

His father spoke, his back still to him. “Good soldiers do, Dean, and you're a good soldier.”

Dean smiled, thrilled as always by any praise from his father, and went into the bathroom. He stripped off his tattered pajama bottoms and started the water, which ran tepid from the moment he stepped under the spray and never got any hotter. He lathered his hands with the sliver of soap and began to stroke himself, thinking of Sammy this time instead of his father. John dominated his jerk-off fantasies as he dominated every area of his life, but his little brother took over now, adding an edge of guilt to the pleasure.

He avoided thinking about what might have prompted Sammy to do what he'd done this morning, sure that Sammy was completely unaware of what he and their father did in the depths of the night, and simply concentrated on the remembered feel of Sammy's mouth, lips, and tongue until he shot with a strangled groan.

When Dean came back into the room to get dressed, Sammy was already dressed and eating a cold Poptart while their father scoured the room to make sure they left nothing behind, not even a wadded-up Kleenex. Even snot, or cum, in a tissue could be used against them, Dean knew.

He quickly dressed, did a sweep, too, just to be sure, because a second set of eyes was important and could literally be a life saver. The three of them left the room, piling into the Impala parked a few doors down. Dad drove away fast, as if he couldn't wait to shake off that latest-in-a-string of dreary, cheap motel rooms, and Dean was sure that was the case. He twisted his head around and took a last look at the place as it receded. He would always remember the Empire Motor Lodge and what had begun there. *******

 

“Dean, I sense a certain distance between us. We can't have that now, can we?” Alistair's hated voice pierced him as sharply as the razors and knives he used, bringing him back to the present, the literal Hell he was enduring. How long had it been? Twenty years? More? Dean couldn't be sure. Time was extremely slippery here, a greased eel. He raised his head and looked at Alistair, his demonic torturer since the day he'd been dragged into the Pit by Hellhounds. In Hell, Alistair was as fluid in his appearance as he was up above, but not needing to find and possess vessels here, the demon could assume any form he chose and change it moment to moment if he wanted. Right now, Alistair looked like a long-haired Viking: tall, blonde, Nordically handsome, and brutally barbaric. Of course, Alistair was brutal in any form.

“What were you thinking about, Dean? Was it Daddy? You _do_ know that John's back here, right? For quite some time. A soul as tainted as his couldn't remain free for very long. He's starting to really... _fit in_ now. I could bring you two together, if you'd like? It might be fun to watch...”

Disappointment washed through Dean. John had made it out when the Hell Gate opened in Wyoming, but, after helping him kill the demon Azazel, his father had disappeared again. It was the story of his life, his disappearing father. Dean and Sam had hoped that their Dad had found peace somehow, somewhere, since the Hell Gate. It hadn't occurred to Dean that John would end up back here, but it wasn't all that surprising.

Dean didn't want to see his father and he especially didn't want his father to see _him_ , not like this, so that meant he couldn't let Alistair know how he felt. Alistair would fetch John in an instant if he thought it would upset him. “Yeah, do it,” Dean replied. “Perfect time for a family reunion.” The good old Br'er Rabbit trick.

“Hmmm... Actually, I think I'll save that for later,” Alistair mused, stroking his short, dirty-blonde beard.

Of course, Alistair would choose to wait and use his father against him when it would have the worst effect, when it would break him, and Dean wished he knew when that point would come so he could prepare for it. He'd held out so long, so _long,_ but he wasn't strong enough to hold out forever, he knew that, and it shamed him more than anything he'd done in his life. When the cutting began again, Dean took hold of Sammy like a talisman and plunged into the abyss of memory once more.

 

 ******* Dad was out “getting the lay of the land,” which meant drinking in a bar and looking to get laid. Dean always told himself that he wasn't jealous when his father did this, though it actually did upset him to the point where he often ended up picking fights with Sammy, but...not tonight. Tonight, Dean couldn't spare a thought for his father. He had to talk to Sammy and they needed privacy to have that talk, so it was good that John was gone again. It was just a little difficult to get the conversation started.

The crappy old TV was helping, though, never resolving a clear enough picture for either of them to get lost in the show. Finally, Dean shut it off and turned to Sammy, tucked at the far end of the torn and cracked fake-leather sofa in yet another cheap motel room. Before he could open his mouth, just from the look on his face, Sammy could tell what was coming and spoke first.

“I changed my mind. I don't wanna talk about it.”

Dean laughed. Normally, it was the other way around. Sammy chattered about anything and everything, always had a million questions, and he was the quiet one who rarely wanted to talk, especially not about feelings.

“Well, tough,” Dean said. “We're gonna talk about it and now's the best time, while Dad's gone. So, why'd ya do it, Sammy?”

Sammy looked away, picked at a tear in the couch, shrugged. “Dunno.”

“You _do_ know, Sammy.” Dean scooted close to his brother, pinning him into the corner of the couch. “Tell me,” he ordered.

Sammy's chin hit his chest as his head fell forward, hiding. Dean could barely hear the words Sammy spoke into the folds of Dad's old sweatshirt. “'Cause you do it, I guess.”

Dean sucked in a breath, his heart racing. Sammy had seen him with John. He cast his mind back but he couldn't remember a time even suspecting that he was being observed. Both he and his father had keen senses, especially a hunter's sixth sense for being watched. “When?” Dean asked, trying to sound calm.

Sammy shrugged again. “Coupla weeks ago...and a coupla nights ago.”

“Whadya see?” Dean probed. He really hoped Sammy hadn't seen him with any of the guys he hustled. He hoped it was only their father, because if Sammy had seen him making money, that meant Sammy had been outside unprotected, and that thought caused a hollow pit to form in his stomach.

Sammy burrowed farther into their father's sweatshirt. Dean half expected him to disappear into the neck hole like a nervous turtle. He pushed gently against Sammy's forehead with the heel of his hand, raising his head. Sammy shook him off, but did look at him. “You can tell me, Sammy. I ain't mad at you or nothin'.”

“You're not?”

“No, I ain't mad. Believe me.”

Sammy's gaze bored into him. Twelve years of reading his moods and intentions, being tricked and teased and cared for and loved by him, had made Dean _known_ – Sammy was now using all that knowledge of him to make a leap of faith even greater than the one that had landed him in his bed. He started talking.

“Okay. Well, uh, the first time, I got up to go to the bathroom and I think I fell asleep on the toilet. When I woke up a little, I, uh, started to go back to the couch, but I saw Dad just sort of standing by the side of the bed all weird, so I stopped. Then I saw you had, um, you had Dad's dick in your mouth.”

Dean remembered that night. Sammy had supposedly been asleep on the couch in a sleeping bag, but apparently he'd gotten up to go to the bathroom while Dean had been asleep and before John had come back to the motel and woken him up, unsuccessful at finding a woman that night. Dean felt his face warming. He remembered sucking John to hardness, then kneeling on the bed helping him get undressed, remembered John kissing him, smelling and tasting the booze on his father's breath, his father pushing him back on the bed and pulling off his pajama bottoms...his father fucking him. “Didya watch everything?” Dean asked, his voice unable to rise above a whisper.

Sammy nodded. “Yeah, I was just _stuck_ in the bathroom, ya know. I didn't wanna get in trouble or...or...anything, so I waited till it looked like you guys were finally asleep and then I went back to the couch.”

Dean felt guilty. Sammy shouldn't have seen that. His little brother copied him in everything, looked up to him, modeled himself after him. He had tried so hard to keep Sammy a kid as long as he could. He'd kept the knowledge that monsters were real and Santa wasn't from Sammy until Sammy himself had forced the issue by finding John's journal and the gun that Dean kept under his pillow. Sammy had confronted him, demanding answers. Dean had failed at hiding the realities of the world from Sammy, and now he'd failed at hiding his relationship with their father from him. He looked away, down at the frayed laces of his cheap sneakers.

“Sorry you saw that. You weren't supposed to,” Dean apologized.

“I figured. You sure you're not mad?”

“I ain't mad. What else didya see?” Might as well know the full extent of his failure. If Sammy had left the room and seen him...

“The other night, I, um, only pretended to be asleep,” Sammy said, a little more confident now that he knew for sure he wasn't in trouble. “I watched Dad kiss you a long, _long_ time, like they do in movies, and then I watched you lick and rub his dick. I saw you get on top of him and...and...and then I fell asleep. You guys were, um, _doing it,_ right?”

Relieved that Sammy had only caught him with their father, Dean said, “Yeah. So you hadda try it, too.” It wasn't a question but rather a statement of fact. _Whatever_ he did, his kid brother wanted to do, too. At least Sammy'd tried it out with him and not John.

Sammy nodded. “If you and Dad do it, why can't I?”

Dean tried to say because it was wrong, but the words stuck in his throat. Right and wrong meant different things in their world. It was right for them to lie and steal and kill and it was wrong to get caught because they were fighting a war that wasn't even visible to civilians, the people Dad fought for and killed for and saved. Their family lived by an entirely different set of rules, and Dean knew it, but even given their strange circumstances, could he say that what he and Dad did was right? While Dean had come to terms with his sexual relationship with their father years ago, his little brother getting involved...well, Sammy was _already_ involved, as he'd proven this morning. Sammy had voluntarily gotten in bed with him and sucked his cock – and it had felt fantastic. Dean selfishly wanted more, and there was precious little he was selfish about, especially when it came to Sammy. Sammy clearly wanted something, too. Dean had been his brother's primary teacher for everything from potty training to reading to swimming, so teaching Sammy about sex – especially when Sammy was asking him to, especially when he himself wanted to – wasn't really that strange. As long as they kept it secret from their father, why shouldn't he let Sammy explore and discover safely with him? Sammy was too young for John, but for him...? “Okay, Sammy,” Dean finally replied. “I'll show you the ropes, but you can't tell Dad. He can't find out.”

Sammy cocked his head.

“Not 'cause you'll get in trouble, but 'cause Dad'd be too much for you to handle, understand?”

Sammy nodded, a knowing look on his face like he did understand what he meant, and said, “It's like me learning to shoot with the handguns and the .22 rifles and leaving the bigger guns for you guys until I'm older, right?”

Dean did smile then. Trust Sammy to come up with the perfect analogy. “Exactly, Sam the Man, that's exactly right!”

“Don't call me 'Sam the Man,' Deanie weenie.”

Dean pounced, driving his hands into Sammy's sides, his armpits. Sammy barked laughter, hooted breathlessly, squirmed so hard he squirted out from under him on the slippery fake leather of the sofa, dropping halfway onto the floor. Dean grabbed Sammy and pulled him back up and kissed his cheek, then his mouth, and Sammy went still and let him. *******

 

Sammy had smelled and tasted like milk back then, Dean remembered, as another strip of skin was flayed from his body by Alistair's razor. How he wished he could smell it again, that fresh-milk scent of his little brother.


	2. of Part 1

 

**CHOICE MATTERS**

 

**Part 1 – Chapter 2**

Why the torture hurt so much when he no longer had his physical body, Dean could never understand. After twenty-five years or so, he'd finally chalked it up to magic, since, despite his dealings with demons, he'd never had a spiritual or religious bone in his body. Of course, here he literally didn't have any bones in his body, but Alistair still managed to break most of them every “day,” only to heal him every “night.” Then again, maybe this wretched carcass _was_ still his body. The rules of Hell were confusing and ultimately pointless to think about. There were other things to think about.

Over the course of the time he'd been here, Dean had been hounded from one mental hiding place to another, and one by one, each had broken down and let in Alistair's voice and his torments. Now the only place that was safe, that still provided him some protection, was Sammy. Thinking about and remembering Sam. It was natural that the strongest, most secure refuge was his brother. There had never been anyone in his life he loved more than Sam, not any of the women he'd slept with, not his long lost mother, not even his father, who had been so many things to him: teacher, drill-sergeant, hero, lover. Despite everything, Dean had loved John deeply. His father had trained him, had done his best to give him the tools to survive, had shaped the man he'd become, for good and ill, had made the ultimate sacrifice and traded his life for him...but Sam was special.

From the moment he'd carried baby Sammy from their burning house when he was four years old, Dean had felt responsible for him. And all the times their father had left them alone when they were growing up had turned that responsibility into a sacred duty, a life's mission that he'd die to fulfill. In fact, he _had_ died for Sam. That was why he was here being tortured in the first place. But his going to Hell wasn't Sammy's fault, nor was his sometimes crushing feeling of responsibility for his little brother Sammy's fault. Sammy hadn't asked for any of it.

When the chains wrapped themselves around his neck and limbs and began to tighten and the hooks pierced his back, holding him in place for today's “activities,” Dean hid himself in the memory of the night Sammy had gotten drunk for the first time.

*** As it had turned out, Dean hadn't been able to fulfill his promise to teach his brother about sex right away, due to circumstances beyond his control.

The last time they'd run out of money while their father was on a hunt, instead of hustling, Dean had stolen food for Sammy and gotten caught. He hadn't been able to talk or charm his way out of being arrested. Stealing wasn't even _close_ to the worst or most difficult thing he'd done to provide for his little brother over the years, of course, but unlike those sometimes humiliating, sometimes terrifying experiences, stealing had actually ended up separating him from Sammy, thanks to John.

His father had refused to get him out of jail, to “teach him a lesson,” John had said – not for stealing, of course, but for getting caught. That brutal abandonment had definitely taught Dean one thing: it was better to have men pay him for sex than to get caught stealing. People cared a lot more about stolen goods than about young teen boys prostituting themselves for enough money to buy bread and peanut butter for their little brothers.

Instead of staying in jail, however, Dean had ended up in a boy's home, which hadn't been nearly as bad as he'd expected. In fact, he'd been tempted to accept Sonny's offer to stay at the home, he'd been so happy there, even though he'd missed Sammy something awful. At the home, Dean had gotten an inkling that some kind of normal future for himself just might be possible.

But then, when his father had thought he'd had enough “punishment” and had come to pick him up, Dean had seen Sammy playfully hanging out the window of the car with his toy airplane. Dean remembered that his duty was to his family, especially his little brother, not to the boy's home or Sonny, the director, or the wrestling team or his maybe-possibly-could-be-girlfriend Robin, so he'd told Sonny he had to go. Sonny, who'd been kind to him and supported him for no reason Dean could see, had seemed very disappointed that he was leaving. Dean couldn't explain to Sonny why he had no choice.

Less than a week after picking him up from the home, John had left him and Sammy alone at a hunter's safehouse, an old, rundown cabin somewhere in northern Idaho in the middle of nowhere. Their father had gotten a lead on something that might be a shapeshifter, and had left to hunt it alone. John had done some shopping and then given Dean whatever cash he had left before he took off, reminding Dean to starve instead of steal. Dean knew that starving was a real possibility if their Dad didn't come back relatively soon, considering there was no one within probably fifty miles to hustle for money if he needed to.

The ancient television in the cabin didn't work and there were only stacks of old news and financial magazines to read, so that first night Dean and Sammy sat at either end of the couch and tossed a tennis ball back and forth for a while. Then Dean remembered the cases of beer and bottles of scotch their father had bought, since no grocery run was complete without booze. He hadn't been allowed to drink at the boy's home, and he'd missed it, so he decided to get drunk. After double-checking his weapons, the locks on the doors and windows, all the curtains and shutters, and the lines of salt laid down at every opening into the cabin, Dean started in on the beer, leaving the scotch alone...for now.

Dean liked scotch, sure, and whiskey and bourbon, but hard liquor was really strong and sometimes made him throw up. He preferred beer because he could function on it even when he was pretty drunk. If he suddenly needed to protect Sammy tonight, he wouldn't miss his shots if he was only drunk on beer.

John had let him start drinking regularly and without restriction right around the time he'd decided to make sex a part of their relationship, and only tonight, after his fourth beer began to make him feel horny, did Dean make the connection.

“Hey, Sammy, you want one?” Dean asked, gesturing with his empty bottle as he got up to get another beer. He'd been drinking long enough to be able to hold his booze pretty well, but he had been dry a couple of months, which was probably why he stumbled into the coffeetable on the way to the fridge.

“Sure, I guess,” Sammy replied. “You're such a spaz,” he added when Dean tripped, laughing at his clumsiness.

Sammy had been trying to teach himself to juggle with one ball when Dean had stopped playing catch to drink, so at that remark Dean spun around and slapped the ball out of the air, neatly taking down some dusty knicknack on a shelf across the room. He still had it, even after four beers.

“No, _you're_ a spaz. I'm just feelin' a little drunk.”

“What's it feel like?” Sammy asked, retrieving the ball and plopping himself back down on the sofa.

Dean remembered that Sammy had only had one beer in his life, half of one, really, given to him by one of their Dad's friends when he was nine, so why not let him get drunk tonight? He opened two bottles and brought them back to the couch, handing one to Sammy. “You'll like it. Bein' drunk makes you feel good. Relaxed. Kinda warm and floaty.” He sat down next to Sammy and clinked their bottles together, then upended his.

“ _Dad_ never acts like he feels good when _he's_ drunk,” Sammy said, then, copying him, took a big gulp of his beer and started to choke, coughing out some of the liquid onto his sweatshirt.

Dean, laughing, patted him on the back. “Yeah, you're a total spaz.” Dean elbowed his brother. “Just take it easy, dummy.”

“Don't call me dummy, jerk,” Sammy choked out, elbowing him back. “Why does this stuff have to taste like crap?!”

“You get used to it. The important thing is how it makes you feel.” Dean took another big swig.

“So when am I gonna feel it?”

“Just keep drinkin',” Dean replied.

Slowly, Sammy sipped his beer, taking twice as long to finish his first as Dean did to finish off his fifth. Neither of them said anything until both bottles were empty, then Dean asked, “You feelin' it now?”

Sammy tipped his head up to him, his eyes now half-closed and his cheeks and lips pink. “I _am_ kinda warm, but that's it. I wish we could open a window.”

“Yeah, me too, but you know we can't. Take off your shirt, and your shoes and socks. You'll feel cooler.”

Sammy had a little trouble pulling his sweatshirt off over his head after only one beer, so Dean automatically helped him. He'd been dressing and undressing Sammy since his brother was six months old. He'd even changed his diapers, potty-training him by example as quickly as he could to get out of _that_ duty. Sammy had been in big-boy pants at two.

Dean stripped Sammy down to his jeans, took off most of his own clothing, then asked as casually as he could, his heart in his throat, “Did Dad do anything with you while I was gone?” Dean knew that was probably a little too vague. He'd been concerned since the day their father had refused to bail him out of jail that with him not around to take care of John, John might turn to Sammy instead. This was the first time since he'd come back that Dean had had both the time alone with Sammy and the artificial courage of alcohol to ask his little brother about it.

“Do anything? Like what?”

“Like what you saw me and Dad doin'. What you tried to do to me that one time.”

'Oh, _that_. No.” Sammy was blushing now.

Dean was relieved. Taking care of their father was _his_ job, not Sammy's.

“Do ya still wanna learn about it? With me?” Dean licked his lips. He wanted another beer, or to kiss Sammy again the way he had when they'd made out on that slippery leather couch, but he didn't want to push Sammy into it.

“Yeah. I'm sorta confused about something. How can you and dad have sex?

The question made Dean suddenly lurch to his feet and Sammy shrank back in alarm. “I'm just gettin' us more beer, dude. You obviously need another one. Relax.” Dean was chiding Sammy for over-reacting but he was the one freaked out by the question and looking for a way to stall.

Sammy smiled nervously up at him, and on impulse, Dean bent and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. He grabbed them two more beers, opened them, and brought them back without tripping over anything, so that was good, but the delay hadn't helped him formulate an answer. How could he explain the situation with their father to Sam when he didn't entirely understand it himself, even after all this time? All he could do was parrot back what John had told him a couple of days after his thirteenth birthday, when Sammy had been asleep and both he and John had been drunk.

Dean sat down right next to Sammy again and handed him his beer. Sammy sipped and Dean gulped half of his before he was ready to tackle the question. “So, Dad and me. Well, Dad told me...he said he had needs. He said with Mom gone, I had to step up to the plate, just like I did with cooking and laundry...and you. He said he wouldn't hafta leave us alone so much if I took care of him. So I did.”

Dean took another swig, thinking about what his father had told him, especially about leaving them alone. Dean knew that Sammy slept better when Dad was with them, and he did, too, just because some of the burden of protecting Sammy was shared. Dean had thought that he could keep Dad with them all the time when he wasn't actually away on a hunt if he did what Dad wanted, but that hadn't turned out to be the case. John still went out trying to pick up women, and that bothered him. Dean felt like he was keeping up his end of the bargain and John wasn't. Someone else got John's attention far too often, and Dean was upset and jealous every time.

Sammy blinked at him for a moment. “No, I didn't mean that. I mean _how_ can you? You don't have a...a...what girls have, so _how_...?”

Dean chuckled. That was more like it. Questions about parts and how to use them he could handle a lot better than feelings and reasons, especially when he was coming to suspect that the reasons might be lies, if not the feelings. “Boys have a hole, too, ya know,” he replied matter-of-factly.

Sam looked quizzically disgusted. “But that's...that's for _poop_.”

Dean threw his arm around Sammy's shoulders and said softly in his ear. “Yeah, and you _piss_ with your _dick_ but you use it for other stuff, too. I noticed you been takin' longer in the bathroom.”

Sammy squirmed out from under his arm. “Nuh uh!” he countered indignantly, giving him a shove.

“You can't fool me, Sammy. You been playin' with it!” Dean laughed as Sammy punched him. “You know that's howya make it get bigger, right?”

Sammy stopped punching. “It is?”

“Yeah. The more you play with it, or let somebody else play with it, the bigger it'll get. Mine's pretty big and still growin',” Dean replied, a little proudly. It was true. He was already nearly as big as their father. “You wanna see it?”

Sammy's eyes went down to his crotch, and seeing his brother looking at him, obviously curious about his cock, made it hard in an instant. He quickly unzipped and fished it out. “See.”

“Yeah,” Sammy said, with a breathy sigh. “It's bigger than it was before.”

“That's 'cause I play with it every chance I get.” Dean took hold of himself.

“Does Dad ever play with it?” Sammy asked, briefly taking his eyes off his cock to look at his face.

“Mine or his?”

“Yours.”

“No.” Dean looked away, felt the same small pang he felt whenever he thought about that, how his father didn't seem to like or want anything to do with his cock. But the way Sammy was looking at it, like it was a Rocket Pop on a hot day, felt really good. “Do you wanna touch it?”

Sammy nodded and reached for his dick at the same moment he let go of it, in perfect sync. Dean gasped as Sammy's warm little hand took hold of him. Sammy immediately let go.

“Did I hurt you?” his brother asked anxiously.

Dean shook his head. “Nah. Feels good. Do it again.” He closed his eyes, felt Sammy's hand grasp him, felt Sammy lean closer so their bodies touched, felt Sammy's breath on his cock. He stayed utterly still and silent, not wanting to scare Sammy away again, but that was difficult to do when he felt the wet heat of Sammy's mouth. Dean opened one eye a slit and saw Sammy's head in his lap and he almost came at the sight. But he wanted more. Softly, he whispered, “See how much can fit in your mouth.”

Sammy didn't respond verbally, he just did exactly as Dean said, tried to take more of his cock in his mouth. Dean bit back a groan, whispering instead, “That's good, Sammy. Now try lettin' it go in and out of your mouth, like you saw me do to Dad, okay?”

Again, Sammy said nothing, just did what he told him to do and now Dean couldn't talk anymore. His head fell back on the couch, his eyes closed in pleasure, letting the incredibly intense sensations wash through him. This was almost as good as getting fucked. He wondered if it was as good as fucking, which he still hadn't done yet – with anyone. Dean opened his eyes and lifted his head, looking down at his crotch.

Sammy was bobbing up and down on his cock, taking it deeper on almost every downstroke but still only half-way. Dean ran his fingers into his brother's hair, which had gotten really long without him around to cut it for him, then down Sammy's narrow back, gently caressing his soft skin, the hard knobs of his spine. “God, Sammy, you don't know how _good_ this feels,” he mumbled, his words a little blurred from the beer and what Sammy was doing to him.

Sammy stopped, looked up at him. “I wanna feel it.”

A jolt of pleasure pulsed through his cock. “You do? You want me to suck you?”

Sammy nodded. “I like doin' it to you, but I wanna try it, too.” He sat up.

Dean gently pulled Sammy's head back towards his cock. “I'll suck you, but take care of me first.”

Sammy resisted his hand, so Dean stopped. “No foolin'? You'll do it when I'm done?” he asked.

“No foolin',” Dean replied sincerely, not planning any tricks. He had every intention of reciprocating; he wanted Sammy to love this, love him. ***

At the time, Dean had had no way of knowing just how _much_ Sammy would come to love him – and the enormous complications those feelings would end up causing.


	3. of Part 1

**CHOICE MATTERS**

  
  


**Part 1 – Chapter 3**

  
  


No one loved him in Hell, Dean thought, except maybe his father. But maybe not. Maybe by now John regretted having given up his life for him. Dean didn't know and hoped he'd never know. He hoped that Alistair would forget his threat to bring John to him.

That threat had been made a long time ago, but it scared him even more now because now Dean sensed he was close to breaking and finally giving Alistair what he wanted. He knew he couldn't take much more.

The worst part was coming to be when Alistair _stopped_ torturing him, stopped giving him something to fight against or hide from, and just randomly left him alone. Those times when he was by himself in his shell of a body, sometimes in the middle of the day when he was only partially worked over, were worse than almost anything Alistair did to him. His memories of Sammy were harder to summon and weren't enough to distract and soothe him when he was left alone.

When Dean was by himself, hung up or tethered in whatever place he was being tortured that day, that's when the guilt came to do Alistair's work for him. Every time he'd failed his father, every time he'd failed Sammy, failed to protect him, every disappointed look from John, every fight between his father and brother he'd failed to stop, every civilian he'd been unable to save, those memories tortured him worse than Alistair ever could, even at his most inventive and sadistic. Alistair could only hurt his body; the guilt shredded what remained of his damned and damaged soul.

Guilt was an old companion to Dean, a life partner he hated but knew like the back of his hand. He had almost grown dependent on it, as if it was a long-time, destructive yet somehow comfortable habit he couldn't break. In Hell, though, guilt had become GUILT and developed claws and fangs.

One guilty memory in particular tormented him: the time Sammy had been attacked by a shtriga. Dean had been ten at the time and Sammy six. They had been left alone in a motel by their father for three days at that point while John was out hunting the shtriga, and Dean had been going stir crazy. Sammy had been driving him nuts with his constant demands to go out and play, to buy candy, snacks, cereal when they had to ration their money in case Dad was delayed coming back. Dean had finally left the room one night when Sammy had at last fallen asleep, fed up and needing to breathe some fresh air just for a minute...

******* Dean decided to get a soda and fished around in his pocket for change, but then he spotted an arcade-style video game in the lobby that looked interesting. When he put the money into the game, Dean figured it would only take a few minutes for him to lose. He didn't have a lot of experience with games because he wasn't allowed time to himself to play very often. But to Dean's surprise, he was good at the game right from the start and kept being rewarded with free plays. Time slipped by unnoticed as he lost himself in the simple joy of play, nothing on his mind but winning, until he was interrupted by the desk clerk wanting to close up the game area. With a jolt of fear, Dean realized he had no idea how long he'd left Sammy alone.

Dean went back to their room only to find something hideous hunched over his little brother. He grabbed the shotgun, raised and aimed it, but he was too afraid he would hit Sammy to fire. He was a decent shot, especially for his age, but the damn creature was too close to Sammy's head for him to feel comfortable taking his shot, so he kept hesitating. Just as he decided to go ahead and fire, John burst into the room and ordered him out of the way. Dean barely had time to throw himself off to the side before his father was firing his handgun, blasting the thing away from Sammy and shooting continuously at it until it smashed through the window and got away.

Dean stood there trembling as his father rushed to the bed to check on Sammy. Clutching his sleepy little brother to his chest, his father questioned him. Though he was scared to admit he'd left Sammy alone, Dean didn't dare flat-out lie to his father. John's condemning words tore through him, but the look he gave him was worse – anger, disappointment, distrust.

John quickly got them out of the motel before anyone showed up asking questions about the gunfire and drove a couple of towns down the road, not speaking to him at all except to give him orders. They settled in at the next motel, Sammy seemingly none the worse for the attack, much to Dean's and their father's relief. As soon as Sammy dropped off to sleep, John turned to him and quietly sent him into the bathroom. Dean was puzzled, but obeyed.

John followed him in, shut the door, and took off his belt. He folded it and gripped it tightly in his fist. Dean knew what was going to happen, even though it had never happened before. His father usually lashed out at him with a hand or fist in the spur of the moment instead of using a belt.

John ordered him to take off his shirt, pull down his pants and underwear, then put his hands against the wall. Dean did as he was told, leaning forward onto his hands, the tile cold against his palms. He focused on the grout, which was discolored and falling out in places, and the mildewy smell of the small room, the dampness that had seeped into the walls from years and years of steamy showers, trying to distract himself.

John ordered him not to make a sound and began to hit him with the folded belt on his back and behind while reminding him why he was being beaten and telling him that he would be beaten a lot worse if he ever left Sammy alone again. Dean had failed in his duty, had shirked his responsibility, and Sammy had almost died because of it. His father was angry and disappointed that he hadn't followed orders, couldn't trust him anymore, couldn't count on him anymore. Dean was going to have to work hard to regain John's trust.

Dean bit into the inside of his cheeks to stay quiet and took every word to heart, as he would have even if his father's belt hadn't been thudding the message home. He knew he'd screwed up. He knew his little brother had almost paid the price for his failure. He vowed never to make that mistake again, never again let himself lose sight of the most important thing: Sammy's safety. He wanted to earn back his father's trust, he wanted his father to be able to depend on him, and he desperately wanted his father's love and approval. The only way to get what he wanted was to do as he was told, like a good soldier. Good soldiers obeyed orders to the letter and carried out their duties without fail.

When his father finally stopped, Dean stayed in position until John gave him permission to move, then he turned his tear-stained face up to his father. John was breathing heavily as he threaded his belt back through the loops of his pants. His father's face was wet, as well, and sharp jolt of guilt pierced Dean when he realized he'd made his tough-as-nails, ex-Marine father cry.

“Do you understand, Dean? Finally?” John asked, his voice strained.

“Yes, sir.”

“You screw up, _your brother dies,_ get it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now take a cold shower. It will help with the pain,” his father told him and left the room, shutting the door softly behind him. *******

In the morning, Dad had dropped them off with Pastor Jim, who was only a few hours away and who sometimes watched him and Sammy when Dad was on a hunt. John had left him with strict orders not to let Jim or Sammy see his bruises. It had taken a long time for those bruises to heal and even longer for Dean to regain his father's trust, but the damage that had been done to his soul by John over the course of his life with his father had never healed, Dean realized, now that he was literally only a soul, and a soul in Hell to boot. That realization didn't make Dean hate his father, though. He didn't have it in him to _hate_ his father, he couldn't do it. John had trained him too well. Despite that fact, he could finally fully recognize and acknowledge to himself the damage his father had done to him.

Though John had never beaten him with a belt again, because Dean had made sure John never needed to, all the rest of it – the alcoholism, the unrelenting militaristic training, the overwhelming responsibility, the manipulative withholding of love and approval, the frequent abandonment, the casual abuse, the sex – was more than enough to fuck anyone up, and there was no denying Dean was royally fucked up. His father had robbed him of his childhood and twisted his manhood to the point where he'd grown up incapable of a lasting relationship with anyone but his brother.

Dean could consciously _see_ and _understand_ how deep the damage went, here in this place of torment. Topside, Dean had spent his lifetime fooling himself and putting on an act for everyone, even Sammy, but here in Hell, there was no way to keep that up. Eventually, Dean had no comforting delusions left about himself or his father.

_____________________________________

  
  


“Dean, Dean, Dean, you have to accept facts,” Alistair chided. “You are perfect for the job, and I'm not going to stop asking until you agree to take your rightful place.”

“Never,” Dean said tiredly. He'd refused every single day, decade after decade, and he was particularly exhausted after today's session. He just wanted to be left alone now, even with the guilt and bad memories.

“You're just postponing the inevitable, boy. You know that you're eventually going to give in. You're not strong enough to keep fighting your destiny. I know it and you know it.” Alistair poised the knife-tip at his right eye.

Dean hated having his eyes put out; however, through sheer repetition, it provoked less panic in him now than it used to. “Bite me,” he whispered.

“Oh? Alright,” Alistair said cheerily, “if you insist.” He put down the knife and snapped his fingers.

Dean heard the Hellhound's slavering growls and his muscles clenched in fear. The last one he'd encountered had ripped him to shreds and dragged his soul down to Hell and Alistair's tender mercies.

The Hell-bitch slammed into him hard, then he felt the teeth. He was emasculated and disemboweled in seconds it seemed. Screaming, Dean resolved to forever retire “Bite me” as a retort and plunged into memory, unable, in the process of being eaten, to find a good one.

  
  


******* “Oh, god, I love you, Dean,” John whispered to him, his lips at his ear, his big cock surging deeply inside him. “I missed you so much.”

Dean spread and lifted as best he could under John's heavy body so he could go deeper, his father's thrusts pleasuring him the way his father's words did not, because this time the words felt like lies.

“Then why'dya leave me in jail, huh? I already learned my lesson when I got arrested,” Dean whispered back.

“It doesn't matter. We're together now.” John suddenly lifted off him, pulled out of him, and flipped him onto his back. John knelt, yanked him up his thighs, held his legs wide open, and entered him again. Now they were too far apart to talk to each other. His father was trying to shut him up in the least inconvenient way that he could, not knowing that Dean no longer had a reason to be quiet since Sammy already knew what they did at night.

John dribbled lube on his cock for him, then tossed the tube aside. His father wouldn't touch him there but he didn't mind if Dean took care of himself. Dean stroked in rhythm with his father's thrusts, looking up at John's black outline against the dimly lit curtains. “It matters to me,” he said, not bothering to whisper, then gasped and closed his eyes, tried to arch his back in pleasure, when John's cock hit him inside just right.

His father stopped moving. Dean opened his eyes again, saw John's silhouette turned towards the other bed where Sammy was rolling over in his sleep. His father waited until Sammy settled again, then he pulled out of him and let go of his legs. In the flash of headlights from a car going past, Dean saw that John was glaring at him, his lips pressed together in fury. His father got off the bed, snatched up the lube, and went into the bathroom, closing the door softly behind him though clearly John would have liked to have slammed it shut if it wouldn't have wakened Sammy.

Dean lay back and closed his eyes, trying not to think of John and failing as he continued to stroke himself until he came all over his belly and hand, knowing John was doing the same thing in the bathroom. As he cleaned himself up with tissues, Dean wondered if he'd done more than just piss John off for a while. He wondered, half hopeful, half dismayed, if maybe he'd stopped his father for good.

On the one hand, Dean _loved_ getting fucked; nothing he'd experienced so far felt as good as his Dad's cock in his ass, not even Sammy's mouth. Besides, John only told him he loved him when he was actually fucking him. On the other hand, now that he was sixteen and had been forced to spend some time, however brief, in the real world away from his father's influence, away from their insular life, Dean was pretty certain that fathers shouldn't fuck their sons, even fathers who were bad-ass, monster-killing heroes. *******

As the days and weeks had passed since that night, Dean had discovered that John wasn't going to stop having sex with him. John had simply chosen the worst of all possible responses: Dean had still been required to give his father blow-jobs on demand, but John had done absolutely _nothing_ that might pleasure  Dean in any way – no touching, no kissing, no fucking, and certainly no declarations of love.

It wasn't until Dean had apologized and begged for his father's forgiveness that John relented and they had resumed their usual relationship.

Dean had learned an important lesson from that whole screwed-up situation: No matter how bad something is, it can _always_ get worse.

Now Hell was teaching Dean that lesson all over again. Getting ripped apart and eaten while being conscious of every tearing bite had been the worst torture yet, and his own smart-ass self had asked for it.

  
  



	4. of Part 1

**CHOICE MATTERS**

**Part 1 – Chapter 4**

Dean came slowly to awareness, already trussed up flat on his back. Lately, he had begun to sleep and dream again when he was left alone. It was almost like he was still alive, and that was bad, but the dreams were good. In some of them, he was even able to escape Hell without having to dredge up memories, which were becoming less and less reliable places of refuge, even memories of Sammy.

In the best dream, the one that kept repeating as if it was a reward for whatever he'd been through that day, he was still in Hell, but he was the one torturing Alistair. Alistair was the one bound and shrieking as he applied the razor, knives, needles, pincers, and Dean loved the sight of Alistair's blood; it was deeply satisfying.

Dean had struggled for so long to resist what Alistair wanted from him, even though he now dreamed of it constantly, because it would mean that he was an even sicker son-of-a-bitch than he already knew he was. But the dream was undermining his resolve, he could feel it. The dream made him _crave_ what he saw in it: wounds that he didn't suffer, blood that wasn't his own, someone else's pain for a change.

Dean chuckled ruefully to himself at his continuing, almost reflexive attempts at self-delusion. He _knew_ he was a worthless sack of crap, he'd _always_ known that, so how could giving in to sadism in Hell tarnish him any more than he already was? How could you dirty up shit?

“You sound like you're in a good mood today, my beautiful boy. Are you?” Alistair asked jovially. He'd abandoned the Viking guise and instead appeared to be a Chippendale dancer, all buff and oiled and chiseled-jaw handsome. Dean knew what that meant.

“No, Alistair, bein' in Hell and bein' tortured has _not_ put me in a good mood,” Dean replied wearily, unable to muster up a sarcastic tone.

“ _Being_ tortured, no, I suppose that wouldn't. But how about _doing_ the torturing? Of some very deserving victims? Say the word, Dean, and I can change your entire perception of Hell.” Alistair brushed his hand lightly between his spread legs, gently cupped his sack, then brushed just as lightly over his cock. Dean sighed, wishing Alistair would stop with the mockery of seduction and just get on with it. After all these years, Alistair raping him was more boring than traumatic, and Alistair had to know that by his reactions, or lack of them, so why even pretend he was trying to freak him out?

Dean only freaked out over men touching him or coming on to him when there were others around to see and judge him. Otherwise, if he wasn't interested, he politely turned down the offer. He had no idea if he was naturally bisexual or if his experiences with his father, Sammy, and paying customers as a kid had broadened his outlook, but, sexually, he liked men and women almost equally. Generally, he loved to fuck women and get fucked by men, but he kept his taste for the latter carefully hidden, even from Sam.

Sam himself was in an entirely different category, of course. He was Dean's exception to every rule, and Dean was Sammy's exception. His Sammy was fully aware of what he wanted from him, and he was fully aware of what Sam wanted in return. In fact, their deep understanding of each other's differently motivated desire for each other had driven them apart over the years almost as often as it had brought them together.

*** Dean clenched his hands on the steering wheel, incredibly excited to have Sammy back with him for the first time in years, but determined not to show it. He and Dad swung by Stanford from time to time to check up on Sam, both separately and together, though neither of them had spoken to him in a very long time, years. Both Dean and John had been incredibly hurt by Sam's defection, but they still worried about Sam's safety. Just because Sam was no longer hunting didn't mean there weren't things out there that would hunt _him_.

Dean had last seen and spoken to Sam two years before. Their meeting had been purely accidental, and unpleasant. Dean had just finished a solo job in Humbolt County, merely a poltergeist, but he'd bedded a hot little waitress in town who had ended up giving him nearly half a pound of the best pot he'd ever smoked as a parting gift, which had made the case memorable. As he'd been leaving the small town, Dean had decided to take a run down to the South Bay and check on his little brother while he was in California.

He'd been drinking in a bar near the Stanford campus and chatting up the beautiful, dark-haired bartender, when he'd heard his brother's voice behind him. He had been surprised, and had thought he must be mistaken, because every time he'd looked in on Sammy in the past, Sam studied during the week. But when Dean had surreptitiously glanced around, there was Sam with a group of friends. Sammy had looked good, smiling and laughing, happy and healthy. Dean had planned on doing his usual peeping-Tom thing at Sammy's apartment later on, but Sam having eliminated the need for that, Dean had decided to concentrate on getting the bartender in bed.

Dean had casually headed off to the men's room before Sam could spot him. He was a past master at loitering in restrooms to make money, but that night, he'd only wanted to stay out of Sammy's way until his brother left and he could go back to hitting on the bartender. Sam would probably go home early; he was too diligent to stay out late on a weeknight. Suddenly, long before he should have needed to as there had hardly been enough time to have gotten even one beer down, Sam had walked into the restroom. Dean had darted into a stall, but it had been too late.

“Dean?”

Dean had emerged from the stall, a little sheepishly. “Hey, stranger.”

Sam had frowned at him. “What are you doing here? Checking up on me?”

“Working a case,” he'd replied. A case way up north, but he hadn't felt the need to tell Sammy that.

“Of what?”

“Poltergeist.”

Sam had nodded at him politely, but he'd clearly been uninterested in either him or the case. Then he'd just stood there and looked uncomfortable.

Dean had gotten angry at his brother's standoffish attitude, so he'd said sarcastically, “Go ahead and piss,” waved a hand magnanimously towards the bank of urinals like he owned them. “No need to stand on ceremony with me.”

“Dean, would you just leave me alone? I don't need a leather-jacketed guard dog!”

Dean had given Sam an arch look and an insouciant grin, though he'd been seething inside, and had immediately left the bathroom, the bar, the town, and the state and hadn't spoken to his brother since.

Now Dean and Sam were back on the road together looking for John, who'd gone incommunicado on Dean while Dean was in New Orleans working another case on his own. Par for the course, really, John dropping off the radar, but Dean had decided to take the opportunity presented by their father's latest disappearance to try to make up with Sammy. At first, he'd pretended he needed his brother's help to find John, but Sammy hadn't bought that line for one second, so Dean had told him the truth – he didn't want to search alone. His brother had agreed to leave school and his beyond-hot girlfriend, Jessica, to help him look for John. Sammy insisted he had to be back at Stanford on Monday for a law school interview, and Dean had every intention of getting him there on time, after making the most of the couple of days they had together to try to repair their fractured relationship.

Sammy was turned away from him, looking out the passenger window, mile after mile, neither of them able to open up. After a lot of silent miles, Sam spoke first, asking hesitantly, “Did Dad say anything about me the last time you talked to him?”

Dean swallowed hard. He knew he had to lie. If he told Sam the truth about how Dad usually spoke about him, Sam would demand to be taken back to Palo Alto that instant, back to his school and his girl and his future, and Dean needed him to stay right where he was until they worked things out. “Dad didn't have a chance to say anything about you, Sam. He was in the middle of a hunt.”

After another long silence, Sam said, “It was so fucked up, what he did.”

Dean knew exactly what Sammy was talking about, out of the hundreds of fucked-up things his brother could have been referring to. “What did you expect Dad to do, huh? You were runnin' out on us, leavin' us, leavin' the job unfinished. He was hurt. We both – ” Dean shut his mouth, clenching his jaw tightly on the words before all his bitterness at Sam's betrayal poured out too hot, too fast, remembering that night Sam had left for college, one of the worst nights of his life.

“So he tells me if I go I can never come back? That's a _rational_ father's response to his son earning a free ride at _Stanford?_ ”

That rankled, too. Dean had had time since Sam had left to feel some pride at what Sam had accomplished, but his own hard-earned GED was as much formal education as he'd ever get, and both of them knew it. He kept his jealousy in check, though, and answered the question. “Our job, it's sorta like a calling, Sam. We save people's lives.”

Sam snorted derisively. “It's not a 'calling,' Dean! It's Dad's _obsession_ and you always bought into it. You drank the Kool-aid until your tongue turned purple and asked for more! After everything he's done to _both_ of us, you _still_ defend him!”

“And you're still here helpin' me look for him,” Dean replied, trying to calm down and not piss Sam off any more than he already was. He kept his eyes on the road, but he saw Sam staring at him out of his peripheral vision, then finally look away again at the scenery flashing by.

Quietly, Sam said, “I'm here for _you,_ not him.” ***

They hadn't found their father that weekend, and Dean hadn't gotten as far along in the repair process as he would have liked, but he had still kept his promise to his brother to get him back to school in time for his interview.

However, soon after dropping Sammy off, Dean had ended up rescuing his brother from a fire in his apartment and Sam had been back with him and dedicated to the job the way he hadn't been for years.

Sam's girlfriend Jessica had been murdered by the same demon, Azazel, who had killed their mother, in the same manner as their mother, and their father was still missing. Becoming a lawyer and living a normal life had suddenly been shoved way, way down on the list of priorities for Sam. Dean didn't like the fact that he'd felt an enormous sense of relief at Jessica's death, but he couldn't deny that he had. Her death had given him back his brother.

That relieved response to his brother's loss of the girl he'd intended to marry was one of the many, many reasons Dean knew, deep down inside and despite his raging against it, that he _did_ deserve to suffer the torments of the damned.

__________________________________

 

Dean was alone, tightly trussed up in yards and yards of rope, dangling over what appeared to be a bottomless pit. Heights bothered him sometimes, so he'd shut his eyes and kept them shut after one brief glimpse. To distract himself, Dean began thinking about Sammy, recalling how quickly Sammy had taken to him and their “messing around” sessions after his first drunken blow-job, obsessed with learning everything that Dean could teach him, which wasn't a whole lot at that time. Dean should have remembered later when things began to get more intense between them that Sam was like that, almost as obsessive as their father even though Sam would never admit it. But Dean hadn't remembered because at the time, he'd been too consumed with pushing for something he wanted, never realizing what it could do to his brother. Dean veered away from that memory to another, happier one.

*** Sammy was thirteen when he discovered porn. Dean had skipped school that day because he'd been up all the night before hustling at a nearby bar. He'd made just over two thousand dollars at the pool table and in the men's room, so he was in a very good mood when his little brother returned from school.

Dean noticed Sammy looking a little shifty, acting oddly protective of his backpack, and that made him instantly suspicious. “Whatcha doin', Sammy?” he asked, rolling up to sit on the edge of the bed. If his little brother had drugs, Dean would confiscate them and use them himself or sell them. Sammy was too young yet for drugs.

“Hours of homework,” Sam replied, then poured himself a glass of milk and laid a couple of books out on the small table in the kitchenette, immediately zipping the backpack up and keeping it next to him on the tabletop. “And it's 'Sam'.”

Dean got up from the bed and approached his brother. “Yeah, sorry. Anyway – “ he said, suddenly lunging at the table and snatching up the backpack. He held it up in the air far out of Sammy's reach.

“Hey! Give that back, you jerk!” Sam shouted, jumping up and reaching for the backpack. When he couldn't grab it, he kicked Dean hard in the shin.

Dean laughed and spun away, ran for the bathroom and locked the door. Sam pounded on it at first, and Dean quickly searched the backpack before Sam thought to pick the lock. The pounding stopped.

He found the magazine buried at the bottom, wrapped up in a t-shirt. He smiled. Kids. He opened the bathroom door, almost knocking Sammy over, crouched as he was in front of the door with his picks. “Dude, this is nothin' you hafta keep from me,” Dean said, holding up the magazine.  
Sam turned away, his face red, put his lockpicks away. “I wasn't sure.”

“Come _on,_ ” Dean scoffed. “It's _me_.”

Sam turned back to him, studying him, then he smiled.

“So,” Dean said, plopping down on the end of the bed, skimming through the magazine, which was more than a girly mag. It was photo displays of full-on fucking. “You looked at it yet?” he asked.

“Nah, not yet. I just found it at the bus-stop.”

Dean nodded, that was possible around here. “Well, you wanna look at it now? With me?”

“Sure,” Sam replied. He was always up for messing around.

They took off most of their clothes and settled on the bed side-by-side. Dean turned to the first picture in the magazine and they studied a scene of a blonde woman on her knees, rear-end angled towards the camera, while a man with a thick, stumpy cock stood a little off to the side, grabbing hold of and squeezing one of her asscheeks. The blonde's pussy was gaping open, a lurid pink, and Dean started to get hard.

“So...that's what they look like down there,” Sammy said, and there was a hint of, well, not exactly disgust, but something not entirely enthusiastic either, in his voice.

“That's what the kind of woman who lets people take pictures of her gettin' fucked looks like, anyway.”

“So not all girls?”

Dean had only been with five girls and two women at that point, but he figured that was a large enough sample from which to generalize. “Regular girls, their pussies are kinda folded up, like roses. You hafta tease the petals open.”

“I guess they don't take pictures like this of regular girls?”

“Nah, you gotta experience them in person.”

Sam looked up at him. “Will you teach me how?”

Dean smiled. “Of course. When you're older.” He flipped the page. In the next picture, the shot was from the side, the guy's cock was halfway in the woman's pussy. This time the woman's mouth was gaping open towards the camera, big tits hanging down, the man holding her by the hips. Dean gave the magazine to Sammy to hold and kissed him, tipping his head back against the wall. They had gotten kissing down to a science in the last year, their mouths fitting together perfectly. His brother was a better kisser than any girl Dean had been with so far, and he figured that was because he'd taught Sammy exactly what he liked.

Dean finally released Sammy's mouth, tapped the magazine to focus his brother's attention there, then scooted down the bed and opened Sam's pants. Sammy's cock was warm and hard when he took it in his mouth and suckled gently on it.

Dean wanted to give his brother a long, slow blow-job, so he settled himself comfortably on his side, curled up over his brother's crotch. Dean was happy, and he was perfectly content to lie there all afternoon making Sammy happy, too. But Sam had other ideas. Soon the magazine dropped against Dean's head, then it was knocked aside by Sam's hand and then Sam was fisting the hair on the back of his head, trying to grasp the short strands but unable to get a good grip, which was one of the reasons Dean kept his hair short in the first place – some tricks were grabby. Dean responded to his brother's urgency and sucked him harder and faster.

Sam was soon spurting into his mouth and Dean swallowed eagerly. His little brother had only been producing cum for three or four months and it tasted good, not bitter like Dad's.

When Sammy recovered from his orgasm, he pushed at him until he was flat on his back and then climbed on top of him, lying full-length on him with his head propped up on his hands, his elbows digging into his chest. “Porn is kinda boring,” Sammy declared.

Dean wrapped his arms around him. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. It's just pictures of gross strangers. _You_ make me feel good.”

Dean looked up at his little brother and there was a sudden tightness in his throat. He clenched his jaw until the tears no longer threatened, then smiled and said, “Right back atcha, Sammy.”

His brother quirked a grin at him. “It's _'Sam'_.”


	5. of Part 1

**CHOICE MATTERS**

**Part 1 – Chapter 5**

Dean was in agony. He'd already screamed himself hoarse, so no sound came out of his bloody, wide-stretched mouth, but he kept trying to scream anyway. He had gotten used to a lot of things in the decades he'd spent in Hell, but there was simply no way to get used to having your finger- and toenails pulled out one by one and the tender, raw nail-beds dripped with acid, no matter how many times it happened. Alistair liked to start with his fingers and then move on to his toes, and sometimes he sang the piggy song, with particular verve on the “wee, wee, wee” part.

Today, the song hadn't made an appearance yet because Alistair was still working on his fingers, but it was probably coming. Before it did, Dean plunged into memory and to his dismay, it was one of his most confusing, upsetting, and disturbing memories, something he'd thought about many, many times even before he'd died, usually when he was drunk and feeling maudlin. It represented a hard break between his adolescence and his adulthood. It had also caused an even harder break between himself and Sam that he'd always tried, consciously and unconsciously, to repair but never felt that he quite had, no matter how close they had become since then.

It had been a profound experience for Dean, powerful enough to have shaken up his whole image of himself as a man and as a brother. It had been powerful enough to actually drive him away from his family for a time, away from his duty to John and his love for Sammy, and Dean suspected that his leaving was probably the first time he'd broken Sammy's heart. He often wondered what their relationship would have been like if he'd only stayed...

*** Sam had always been shorter than Dean, sometimes much shorter, and Dean felt that was the natural order of things. He was the big brother, after all. But then Sam had had a huge growth spurt when he was coming up on sixteen that shot him up nearly five inches taller than Dean and Dean had been incredibly jealous.

Though Dean had subsequently grown another inch or so, he had remained envious because it was clear that his little brother was going to end up taller than him by the time they stopped growing. The damn kid was even taller than Dad! It was because of all the meals he'd given up to make sure Sammy got enough to eat, Dean had concluded.

When Sam had hit sixteen and gotten past the awkward, coltish stage of new growth, Sam's greater size meant that Dean couldn't automatically count on beating him when they trained under their father's direction. Sam was taller, had greater reach, and had bulked up considerably once he'd started joining him and Dad doing pull-ups and such in addition to the hand-to-hand combat training. Dean had to make more and more of an effort to come out on top.

Sammy was sixteen and a half the first time he knocked him down and pinned him. Dean had been horribly embarrassed because it had been in front of their Dad and a bunch of townies, boys around Sammy's age who'd taken to hanging out in the parking lot of their motel after school and on weekends to watch them as they trained, listening to their Dad instruct them and copying them. Sam hadn't crowed much about his first victory, surprisingly. He'd just raised his fists over his head for a moment, while Dad patted him on the back, before reaching down to him to give him a hand up.

What had mortified Dean more than any of that had been his instant arousal. He'd taken Sammy's hand, bounced to his feet, then quickly ducked into their motel room and headed right into the bathroom, his cock an iron bar in his loose sweatpants.

Dean had stroked himself to a knee-trembling orgasm in the shower remembering Sam's face above him, his tight grip on his arms, the squeeze of his knees against his sides, his ability to _hold him down_...

From that point on, his and Sam's messing around had taken on a new dynamic. Dean was used to being the one who initiated, but suddenly Sam was doing it more than half the time, and, at first, Dean let him. He had started to feel like if he didn't, Sam would _make_ him – and that thought got him hard in seconds. After some pondering over why the mere thought of Sam forcing him turned him on and not finding a reason with which he could be comfortable, Dean had decided “why” didn't matter.

Instead of passively going along with the kissing and fondling that inevitably ended in mutual blow-jobs, just the same as they'd been doing for years, Dean had started teasing Sammy. He'd ramped up the emasculating comments, calling Sammy a girl in as many ways as he could think up, daring him to retaliate. He'd brush up against Sammy as often as possible, even in front of their Dad when he happened to be there. When they were alone, Dean teased his brother by running his tongue around bottle openings, licking his lips, sitting with his legs spread and his crotch thrust forward, but then he would resist when Sam would try to kiss him, turning their messing around sessions into full-on wrestling matches, trying to goad Sam into forcing him, overpowering him, and finally, one day...

Primal struggle, naked skin against naked skin, muscle against muscle, breath heavy and nerves zinging. It was so good, but every time they'd gotten to this point lately, Sam had given up and it'd just been hurt puppy-dog eyes and back to mutual blow-jobs. Today, though, it wasn't going down that way. Today, Sam was still battling him hard and heavy, not giving up or giving in no matter what Dean said or how hard he fought.

“Knock it off, Sammy! You don't know what the fuck you're doin'!” Dean gritted, he was struggling to escape a particularly tight hold and completely failing. Hope was rising in Dean that Sammy was going to keep after him this time.

Sam, panting and furious above him, pressed his arms against the bed, squeezing his wrists tightly in both hands, a knee in his gut. “I know _exactly_ what I'm doing, Dean! I've been watching Dad fuck you for _years!_ It's _my_ damn turn!”

Dean stilled, one leg raised to try to kick his brother off him. He lowered it, staring up into Sammy's eyes. Because they'd never spoken about the subject again, Dean had assumed that those couple of instances of voyeurism Sammy had confessed to years ago were the only times his brother had watched him with their father. Now Sam was telling him that wasn't the case, that their messing around wasn't the only on-going “sex ed” that Sammy had been getting. “You have?”

Sam nodded. “Especially the last couple of years. I've stayed awake on purpose when Dad was with you, just so I could learn how to do it. Now stop _fighting_ me!”

Dean smiled mockingly. “Make me,” he challenged.

Sam immediately punched him in the face, hard. Dean saw stars, felt blood trickling from a split lip. His cock pulsed and he relaxed onto the bed.

“Good,” Sam said, feeling his surrender, and got off him. “Roll over,” he ordered.

Dean complied, more than eager to find out how much Sammy had learned. He spread his legs.

He felt Sammy kneel between them but his brother didn't go right for his ass, which surprised him. Instead, Dean felt Sam's hands on his shoulders, caressing him like a light massage, and it sent a little shiver down his back.

“That's right, just let me do what I want.”

“Or?”

“ _Or_ I'll hit you until you do,” Sammy said angrily, his voice dropping a couple of registers. He wasn't fooling around.

The threat and the tone of voice in which it had been spoken sent a powerful thrill through Dean. He made a soft involuntary gasp and ground his cock into the hideous bedspread. “Okay.”

“Okay, you'll let me do what I want, or okay, hit you?” Now he sounded like Sammy again.

Dean laughed. “Whatever, dude. You're in charge.”

Sammy smacked him lightly on the back of the head and Dean chuckled, but then the massage started again and he quickly lost the impulse to laugh.

By the time Sam worked his way down his back to his ass, Dean was almost boneless. It wasn't even a proper massage, but no one ever touched him like this, not even his father. Dean could feel his brother's love through his hands as they moved over his skin.

Dean felt those hands spread his cheeks open and then the most shocking thing – Sam's tongue licking his asshole. He startled, went up on his elbows, craning his head around. “I _know_ you didn't learn that from Dad!”

Sam looked up at him seriously from between his asscheeks. “Guys like getting their assholes licked just like girls like getting their pussy licked,” Sam duh'd at him as if he was an idiot.

Dean was astonished. Where the hell had Sam learned about rimming? He'd been hustling for quite some time before he'd had tricks demand it and then get annoyed, or worse, when he refused. “How the fuck do _you_ know?”

“God, Dean, you don't know _everything_ about me. I talk to people.”

Dean rolled onto his side. “ _What_ 'people'?”

“People, you know, like the ones who hang around truckstops.”

“Hookers? You've been talkin' to _hookers?_ About _sex?_ What _else_ you been doin'?”

Sam frowned and slapped his ass hard. “Shut up and roll back over.”

Dean flinched, then stared at Sam for a moment, incredulous at what his little brother had managed to get up to despite his and John's constant vigilance. He was also a little worried that some of his own sex work might have been leaked by the same 'people' who'd been contributing to his brother's education on the sly. “Alright, but we're gonna talk about this later!”

“Fine. Just shut up _now_.”

Dean assumed the position again and Sam went right back to doing what he'd been doing and to Dean's complete surprise, he soon found himself moaning and lifting his ass, crushing his pillow in his fists, writhing around, and just generally making a complete whore of himself, which was not something he'd imagined when he'd set this up. Sure, he'd wanted Sam to take charge, he'd wanted to feel overpowered, but Dean had intended to keep some form of control, over himself if not over his brother. But Sam's tongue was doing incredible things to his asshole, things he'd never felt before. The wet caress of Sammy's tongue was softening him, licking him open and wet, teasing him unbearably when the pointed tip speared and wriggled into him. Dean was panting, frantically rubbing his cock against the bedspread, lifting his ass to Sam's mouth, trembling on the very edge...then suddenly everything stopped.

“How's that?” Sammy asked, sounding pleased with himself. “Seemed like you were enjoying it.”

Dean craned his head around. Sammy was sitting up with a happy smirk, wiping his spit off his chin.

“Don't you fuckin' _stop!_ I almost came!” Dean demanded.

“You can wait.” Sam got off the bed and rummaged in his duffle, getting out his lotion bottle. He came back to the bed and got up between his legs again.

Dean put his head back down on his folded arms, kind of amazed at what he'd unleashed in his little brother. Amazed and incredibly turned on. The seeming ease with which Sammy was taking control absolutely thrilled him.

He heard the farty sound of lotion being squeezed out of the nearly empty container, then his brother's cold, slippery fingers wiping the lotion over his hole, “Stick 'em in,” Dean said.

“Dad doesn't do that.”

“I know. He doesn't lick me, either. Just do it.” John had stopped prepping him a long time ago, only slicking his own cock before entering him. Dean didn't know why John didn't do it anymore, but it made it harder for him to take his father's initial thrusts. Sammy's finger poked at him then slid in and Dean gasped softly.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You're really hot in there.”

“Mmhmm.”

Sammy finger-fucked him for a bit, then pulled out. “Okay, so now I just...”

Dean felt Sammy moving over him, pushing his thighs apart even farther with his knees. There was a sharp poke at his taint, a jab into his balls, and Dean yelped, looking quickly over his shoulder. Sammy had both hands on the bed instead of using one to guide himself.

“Wait a second, Sam. Lemme turn over.”

Sammy settled back on his calves as Dean quickly flipped onto his back, legs up and bent. “Okay, come up to me,” he said, as he reached under his raised thigh.

Sammy shuffled close to him and he took hold of his brother's cock, bigger now than his or Dad's, just like the rest of him, and set it at his hole. “Now push.”

Sammy entered him all at once, too hard and too fast, but Dean just clenched his teeth against the momentary bite of pain and took hold of his own legs. “A little slower, Sam.”

Sam, his gaze riveted between their bodies, nodded and began thrusting, again a bit too hard and fast.

“Slow down!”

Sam looked at him. “Sorry,” he said, then went back to his staring, but he did slow down so that he was gliding into him instead of spearing and it started to feel good.

Dean relaxed against the bed, holding his legs up and spread, and let Sammy establish his rhythm. Sam's head dropped back, exposing his long throat and Dean's eyes roamed down his brother's body, watching Sam move in the weak, winter sunlight filtering through the motel's dusty curtains. Sammy's chest was getting broader, filling out even more, his stomach cut from all the working out lately. The strain of fucking was making his muscles pop...Dean licked his lips, tasted blood. “Kiss me, Sammy,” he ordered.

Sam looked down at him, his slightly slanted fox eyes mere slits, nothing of the puppy-dog about them now, then leaned forward onto his arms over him, rolling Dean's hips up and pushing his cock deeper inside him. They kissed, Dean's mouth a little tender from the punch. Sammy dropped down onto his elbows, forearms caging him. Dean felt another frisson pass through him, shivering down his body to clamp his asshole even tighter around his brother's thrusting cock. Dean felt small, enclosed, like he had when he was a kid and John's huge body had seemed to surround him like the world, but Sammy was also making him feel as if he and his brother were merging together, like they were one creature striving towards a singular pleasure. Dean had never felt this way before. He moaned and wrapped his legs around his brother, trying to get even closer, completely losing himself inside Sammy while Sammy lost himself inside him. Dean had no idea how long he and Sam were locked together, moving as one, it could have been hours or days, so completely was his sense of time gone, but at some point Sam's wet mouth slid off his, skidding down his cheek, his brother's breath huffing into his ear. “I'm gonna come,” he warned.

“Do it, Sammy. I wanna feel it,” Dean panted back.

Sammy suddenly pulled up and away from him as he propped himself up on his arms, every muscle straining, and it was a shock to Dean to feel that sense of encapsulated oneness torn away. He felt exposed, vulnerable. Sam thrust into him hard a few dozen more times then stilled. Dean watched Sam's face, felt his cock pulse inside the tight hold of his ass, his own cock twitching in sympathetic response. Finally Sammy dropped back down on top of him and Dean wrapped his arms around him and cradled him, squeezing his ass muscles and making his brother moan and jerk.

Some length of time passed but Sam's cock stayed hard inside him. Sammy often came more than once when they messed around, so Dean was unsurprised when Sammy started slowly moving again.

“Hold up, dude,” Dean said.

“What?”

“Lemme flip over. Hand me the lotion.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Sammy said, his voice soft. He almost sounded like he did when he was drunk.

Dean took the bottle and shook-squeezed the last of the lotion into his hand, then rolled onto his knees, chest against the bed. Sam's hands were immediately on his ass, spreading his cheeks apart, his cock snubbed up to his hole as Dean took hold of his own dick. He fisted it tightly when Sammy slid back up him, already almost on the edge from the feel of his brother's cock inside him, his hands tightly gripping his hips.

Sam fucked him hard, using his hold on his hips to yank him back to him, and that reminder of his brother's strength made Dean shoot almost right away, his orgasm blindingly intense, making him cry out loudly. After he came, it was a bit difficult to deal with the pounding his brother was giving him, but Dean endured it. Giving his Sammy what he wanted, what he needed, was second nature to him. ***

After that first transcendent, transformational experience with his brother, Dean had been a bit frightened, but of what, he'd had no idea. As time passed, he'd become anxious and unhappy, unable to abide living in his own skin, and he'd had no clue why. He'd gotten what he wanted from Sam, more than he had hoped for, and Sam had enjoyed himself, too – as soon became all too obvious. His brother had taken to following him around with moony, pleading eyes, importuning words, grabbing hands, trying to get back in his pants. Sammy's persistent pursuit had been too much for Dean to handle, as upset as he'd been. He'd rebuffed Sam, pushed his brother away over and over, and eventually Dean had run away – sort of, with permission.

Dean had told his father and brother that he had to take off alone for a while, do a “five states in five days” sort of thing and, maybe because of the unhappy desperation John could see in his eyes, his father had actually let him go. Sammy had been another story. His brother had been hurt and angry and...Dean shied away from remembering just how badly Sammy had reacted.

Despite his brother's feelings, Dean had left his family behind in Florida as soon as he could and without a look back, determined to concentrate on himself for a change. He wasn't going to hunt, he wasn't looking to get involved with anyone, he was just going to see who he could be without his father's or his brother's expectations and demands weighing him down.

Getting a break from the fighting between John and Sam had been a bonus. The two of them had suddenly started going at it much more frequently, mostly over completely trivial things like where to eat, and Dean had had to step between them time and time again playing peacemaker. Without him there to intervene and stop the fights...well, Dean had been worried about that but not worried enough to stay.

One of the most important things that had happened to Dean on his private road trip had been meeting a beautiful young woman named Lisa, a brand-new yoga instructor. They'd spent an entire weekend in her loft lost in a sexual daze. Dean had connected with Lisa, and with her body, in more ways than one. Most of his sex life up to then had been with males – his father, his brother, his tricks – and it had felt incredibly good to re-connect with the feminine, re-appreciate what the female form and female perspective offered.

Sex with men was easy for Dean, he'd never had to expend much effort. A lot of the time, simply a lick of his lips and a look in his eye was enough. But with girls, women, he found that most of the time he also had to talk a good game before he could get them where he wanted them. Dean discovered that he really enjoyed playing that game and he really enjoyed women. He'd also found that dealing with women was a lot like hustling at poker, only the pay-off was different. Like cards, talking up a woman meant you had to school yourself, control yourself, mask your true thoughts and feelings, strategize and manipulate. You had to play the person, not the cards, and if your luck was as good as your game, you won. Dean raked in a lot of “pots” on his trip.

By the time he'd returned to his family, Dean had set a new pattern for himself that he found he could live with comfortably: all-women-all-the-time at the surface, men hidden below. Playing the pussy-hound soothed his nerves, reinforced his masculinity, gave him a sense of control, and still let him enjoy everything his sexuality offered when he chose to without exposing too much of himself. Unlike most of the compromises he'd made in his life, this one actually worked.

Now that time – and death – had brought him a measure of clarity, Dean knew exactly why he'd “run away” and broken Sammy's heart. He'd been trying to understand and adapt to his bisexuality while in the midst of a completely fucked-up situation with his father and brother.

The seemingly contradictory demands from his father that he both be a man, and a _manly_ man at that, _and_ submit to him sexually had been messing with Dean's head since he was thirteen years old.

After he and Sam had had sex that first time, Sammy had essentially piled on, demanding that Dean continue to be his big brother and pseudo-parent as well as his role model while at the same time letting him fuck him. Then there was the fact that Dean had lost control of himself, had lost _himself,_ with Sammy. His brother had gotten to him in ways that had left Dean feeling vulnerable, raw, even though he loved and trusted Sammy like he did no one else in the entire world.

The trip away had shown Dean how to be comfortable with himself, had made it possible for him to compromise with himself and the world's perception of him, so from that standpoint, getting away had been good for him. But it had hurt Sammy badly, and as soon as Dean had returned to his family, everything had exploded in his face. He had walked into a huge fight between Sam and John that had been going on since he'd left, just as he had worried would be the case.

Dean didn't want to think about that, though. It wasn't much better than the torture.


	6. of Part 1

**CHOICE MATTERS**

**Part 1 - Chapter 6**

The same question. It was the same fucking question every god-damned “night” and Dean was heartily sick of it.

Alistair, liberally splashed with Dean's blood, asked, “Will you take your rightful place?”

“Fuck you,” Dean choked out.

Alistair laughed and let go of his throat. “That would be an inversion of our relationship which I would not countenance, but it's not exactly a refusal of my offer. Do I detect some softening?” He walked a circle around Dean as he sagged from meat hooks through his wrists and dug deeply into his back. It had been a relatively light day, and Dean still had most of his skin.

“I'll clear it up for you, then. No, you fucking son-of-a-bitch.”

“You've long-since perfected your masochism, boy. Wouldn't you like to challenge yourself with something new?”

Dean shook his head.

“Alright. Well, it's time to let you rest. I want you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when we begin again.”

Alistair took his time pulling the hooks from his flesh and let him drop to the floor. He reached down and put a gentle palm to his forehead, which was a radical contrast from how he usually touched him. It was as if Alistair didn't want to get too involved in the healing process compared to when he was torturing him, then Alistair liked to go elbow deep, _shoulder_ deep. Dean felt the familiar tingle spread through his body as he was made whole again.

Alone, Dean got himself as comfortable as he could on the floor of today's prison cell. Over the years, he'd been tortured in many different settings, some of them used repeatedly and some just once. There had been classic weeping-stone dungeons, high-tech medical and dental facilities, vast open spaces, and in the beginning, an infinitely huge web of chains which had stretched out in all directions farther than his eyes could see.

Restraint had been provided by racks, hooks, poles, columns, chains attached to nothing, sawhorses, walls, crosses, and once even a canopied bed with fur-covered handcuffs. The scenes changed based on Alistair's whim and imagination.

Dean curled up on his side and thought about Alistair's question. His favorite dream, the one in which he was the torturer and Alistair his victim, made him seriously consider the offer. Alistair was the only one he wanted to torture, though, and Dean was sure that he wouldn't be allowed to put Alistair to the razor, so what was the point of the dream?

He'd come to realize that nothing happened here without an agenda, so he doubted that dream. It was too perfect. It spoke right to his heart's deepest desire, which meant it was suspect because Dean couldn't be sure that his heart, let alone his mind, was his own anymore.

To dispel that uncomfortable thought, Dean remembered the first time he'd gotten money for sex, and the fact that he'd chosen that upsetting memory for escape showed him that no matter how bad life had been for him, Hell would always be worse.

*** Leaving Sammy alone tore at him, risked his father's wrath, and upset and endangered his little brother, but Dean didn't see any other way to keep them housed and fed. Dad had been gone over two weeks now and they were out of food, almost down to their last dollar, and the deposit on the motel room was about to run out. If he didn't do something very soon, Dean was sure someone would call the local child protective services and he and Sammy would be split up in foster care. Dean couldn't allow that. Dad would kill him.

At fourteen, he was too young to get a job, and while he had a lot of experience helping his Dad craft fake IDs, Dean couldn't pass for older and he knew it, so he planned to go out and do the one thing he'd learned would get him money quickly enough to keep him and Sammy going until Dad came back.

Dean had discovered what to do when he'd accidentally stumbled onto it a few months ago.

He'd been taking their supper trash out to the dumpster behind their latest motel, Sammy locked up in their room watching television, when a man had approached him. Dean had thought the guy was a handyman or something, because he'd seen him before, wandering around the motel grounds carrying the same large metal toolbox.

“Hey, kid. Come're,” the man had said, making a peremptory motion towards him with his free hand.

“What?” Dean had asked, wondering if he'd broken some kind of rule about using the dumpster, but he'd thrown trash here before so that they didn't have to smell it all night and there'd been no problem.

“I got sumpin' ta show ya,” the man had replied.

Dean had watched the man walk up to him, wishing he'd brought his gun with him. There had been no streetlights behind the motel, and the moon had been only a sliver in the sky, but there'd been enough light to see that the guy was kinda old, at least thirty, maybe even as old as Dad, and he appeared to be human. Not that humans were any less dangerous than monsters.

“What is it?”

The man had put down his toolbox and unzipped his pants. Dean had darted around him without a second's hesitation, running fast. Suddenly an explosion of noise and pain had knocked his breath away and slammed him heavily to the pavement, momentum skidding him along the ground and scraping away skin on his hands and ripping through his pants at the knees. Dean had lain there utterly immobilized, simply trying to breathe, his entire back a white-hot sheet of pain. The man had pulled him up off the ground with a tight grip on his arm. Dean hadn't been able to breathe so of course he hadn't yelled for help.

“Now why'dya make me go and do that for, kid?” the man had asked, shaking him and making the pain in his back worse. “I was gonna pay ya. I'll still pay ya. Ya want some money, kid?”

Dean, his eyelashes wet with tears, had finally been able to take in tiny sips of air, which eased only a little of his panic. He hadn't struggled in the man's grip because he had realized that the son-of-a-bitch had thrown his heavy toolbox at him. He'd wondered what else this man would do to him if he didn't cooperate. Kill him?

Dean had, of course, known exactly what the man wanted and he'd prepared himself to do it if it meant he wouldn't be hurt any more or any worse. He had to stay alive to protect Sammy. Then the word “money” had registered in his mind. “How much?” he'd asked, his back throbbing with every beat of his heart.

“Give ya twenny ta suck me.”

“Fifty.”

The man had snorted loudly. “Fuck, kid! Gaddam hooker don't charge that much!”

“Then go find a goddamn hooker and leave me alone!”

The man had looked him over speculatively for a moment, then said, “Nah. I like ya, kid. Sorry I threw the box at ya. How's about fordy?”

“Okay,” Dean had agreed, and held out his hand for the money first. He might be young, but he wasn't stupid.

The man had chuckled and let go of his arm, dug into his pocket for a worn leather wallet. He'd pulled out two twenties and Dean had longingly eyed the remaining money in the wallet for a moment before he'd gotten down on his skinned knees, his back screaming with pain.

After it was over, the man had told him that he was too good for the blow job to have been his first and asked him why, in that case, he had made such a fuss. Dean hadn't answered him, he'd just gotten painfully to his feet. The man had given him a disgusted look and shaken his head at him before he'd picked up his toolbox and walked off.

Dean had gathered spit in his mouth to get rid of the nasty condom taste and hawked it out onto the ground as he'd slowly walked back to their room, his back in a painful spasm. Dean had felt the money in his pocket like a weight on him; both a guilty burden and a huge relief. But the ordeal he'd been through had shown him he had an option for when things got really tight.

Over the last few months, Dean had had to use this option often enough that he'd been able to figure out what he was doing, both by observing other people doing the same thing he was and by trial and error. Dean did what he could to make it easier on himself, because he wasn't going to let himself get hurt again and put Sammy at risk.

Today, Dean had left Sammy at some kind of clown-themed pizza place, Plucky whatever-the-fuck the name was, giving his little brother the last of their money so he could play the games and buy food. He'd sworn Sammy to secrecy and told him he was going out to “troll for chicks,” which was a lie, of course. Dean knew women didn't pay for sex, let alone sex with a boy his age.

Dean hung out close to the entrance of their motel, where luckily he had no competition and wasn't infringing on anyone else's territory. Shirtless and with a jack-knife in his back pocket, Dean leaned against a pole, pelvis thrust forward, thumbs hooked in his front pockets so his hands framed his crotch, eying the men driving or walking by. He didn't have to wait long before some guy pulled over. Dean was soon sucking the guy's cock in his parked car at the very back of the motel parking lot, calculating how many more times he'd have to do this to pay for food and another week in their room. ***

Dean had quickly come to terms with hustling. It became, along with so many other things in his life, a necessary evil. Hustling men for sex didn't seem that different from hustling them at pool or cards, except that it was a lot easier. Men usually took one look at his mouth and their wallets fell open; it was a guaranteed paycheck. Sometimes he failed to score a mark for pool or cards, or lost games unintentionally, but he never lost money giving blow jobs.

Dean had never told Sammy about it, though, not to the day he died. He'd taught Sam pool and he'd taught him cards, but that kind of hustling was something he wouldn't teach his brother. Of course, he'd also kept it secret from John, but somehow Dean thought his father wouldn't have cared even if he had known. If John had cared, he wouldn't have left him and Sammy alone for so long at a time and never asked how they'd managed on their own when he'd come back. John had simply expected Dean to follow orders and provide for his brother without a thought about what it might take for him to do so. And Dean had provided for Sammy. He _always_ had, one way or another.

Until now. Now Dean was in Hell and Sam was alone. He'd sold his soul for Sam, to bring his brother back from the dead, and he'd do it again in a heartbeat, but while Sam was alive topside, he was also alone. Dad's prime directive – take care of Sammy – had been broken, even though Dean had broken it for the best of reasons.

Dean tried to sleep, hoping to slip into a dream, a good one, sick of the fact that the paradoxes and problems of his life had followed him into death and that death itself had spawned still more. Was it selfish to want just a moment of peace?


	7. of Part 1

**CHOICE MATTERS**

**Part 1 – Chapter 7**

Today, Alistair had chosen something out of the Inquisition, a narrow cage with spikes pointing inward. It wasn't nearly as agonizing as most things Alistair did to him. Sure, he was pierced neck to ankles by fifty or sixty rusty iron spikes, but he wasn't being flayed, fisted, knife-fucked, or disemboweled – yet – so he'd count his blessings. Ironic turn of phrase, given his circumstances, and Dean wasn't in the mood for irony. What he was in the mood for was a cold beer and a soft couch, but he knew neither of those would be forthcoming.

“You know, Dean, if you agree to take your place, there are many perks to be had in the Pit. I don't recall if I've ever detailed them for you. Have I?”

Dean didn't want to respond, but he knew that staying silent only brought more pain. “No. What perks? Beyond the obvious.”

“Yes, the obvious perk is I _stop torturing you._ If you say the word, you'll be taken down and healed, but in addition you'll also be given comfortable quarters, whatever suits your fancy. Wouldn't it be _nice_ to lie down on something soft?”

Dean gulped, his throat suddenly tight. He'd just had that thought and now Alistair brought it up. Either temptation was a routine part of Alistair's spiel at this point in the torture process, or his thoughts _were_ being monitored. Dean involuntarily cringed around the spikes. If that was true, he'd given Alistair a lot more to work with than just a desire for a comfy couch... “I'm fine right where I am,” he finally replied.

“Oh, Dean, you're not fine, you haven't been fine since you were four years old, but let me continue. Apart from bodily ease and comfort, you'll receive a master class in torture as my pupil. You'll be the envy of all of Hell for that, I can assure you. Also, you'll command a coterie of demons to fetch and carry for you – in other words, you'll have your own minions. You'll be given a pet, a fierce Hellhound that will obey only you. Don't all little boys want a dog? And there will be more goodies to earn when you complete your assignments, such as, oh, let's call them 'vacations.' You'd like to check in on your darling Sammy, wouldn't you...?”

Dean's eyes widened and he gasped before he could stifle it, yearning opening a pit in his chest. He couldn't hide behind his poker face when Alistair placed such a prize in front of him. He'd had no idea that seeing his brother again was a possibility.

“Sounds peachy,” Dean finally managed to say after a long, stunned moment, trying to hide his desire, trying for sarcasm, failing. “But what's to stop me from siccin' my Hellhound on you?”

Alistair laughed. “Well, you'd hardly get a trip to Disneyland if you did that, now would you?”

Dean saw the offer for what it was: emotional blackmail. What _couldn't_ Alistair get him to do by dangling the promise of Sam in front of him? The answer was “nothing,” and he wondered why Alistair had waited so long to pull it out of his bag of tricks. A visceral ache to see Sam again was already twisting him up inside just from this brief mention of the possibility. Dean tried to steel himself against the aching desire, but while he'd borne unbelievable physical pain for thirty years, this hurt worse. He closed his eyes and the memory he fell into hurt almost as much.

*** “He's not your property, Dad! He's not your _weapon_ or your _soldier_ or your _fucktoy!_ ”

“He's for damn sure not _yours!_ ”

“ _I_ know that! _You_ don't!”

“He _left_ because of you! He left because you wouldn't leave him alone! Your own brother!”

“Like _you_ ever left him alone? Your own _son!_ Oh, well, except for all the times you _abandoned_ us _both!_ ”

Dean had been home all of ten minutes. He'd just arrived at the latest flea-bag hotel where John and Sam were staying, back with his family again after his solo trip of self-discovery, only to trigger this vicious fight practically the moment he'd stepped inside the room.

Dean tried to intervene, literally stepping between John and Sam at times, pushing at one or the other of them, shouting at them to shut up, but they paid no attention to him at all. They ignored him completely.

It felt very odd to be fought over this intensely while being utterly ignored, very odd and deeply disturbing, because his father and brother weren't considering him as a person, a man, not seeing him or hearing him as a man with an opinion of his own, as if he had no say in the matter.

It was becoming clear to Dean as the fight continued that within their tightly sealed world that shut out everyone but the three of them, both John and Sam thought of him as _different_ from themselves, something _other,_ something _appropriate_ to fight over, and Dean wasn't going to tolerate it. That is, if he could get a word in edgewise, get either of them to acknowledge him.

As the two of them shouted at each other about how much better the one treated him than the other one did, Dean took hold of Sam's shoulders from behind trying to pull him away from their father. “Sam, knock it _off!_ Stop fightin' with Dad over me!”

Sammy spun around, fisted his shirt, dragged him up into his face. “So he's _right?_ You're _his?_ ” Sam demanded, seething, but at least he was finally talking to him.

“Dude! What the hell? This whole thing is _stupid!_ ” Dean retorted, ripping himself out of his brother's hands, incredulous that this bizarre fight was even happening. “Just stop!”

John shouldered Sammy aside as he stepped up to him. “You're right, Dean. There's no need to fight.”

“Exactly, Dad! Thank you!” Dean agreed. “Now, can we all just calm down and let me put my friggin' pack down, at least. Jesus!” He glared back and forth between the two of them and now that they were finally seeing him, they both looked a little ashamed, which made him feel somewhat better.

That lasted until Dean fell asleep around an hour later after a cold, leftover burger, a couple of beers, and a long, hot shower.

“Of course you're mine.” A whisper in his ear woke him.

Dean jerked, said “Wha–?”, and his mouth was immediately covered by John's. His father's hand was cupping his head and holding it still as his big, heavy body came down on top of him, pinning him in place. Dean was so sleep-fogged that it took him a moment to realize what was happening and another moment to realize that he wasn't going to fight it. Seven long years of taking care of John this way compared to a little over a month out on his own – it was no contest.

“Leave him alone!” Sammy shouted and John was shoved half off him. Dean struggled the rest of the way out from under his father and quickly got up on his knees on the bed, grabbing hold of his brother and blocking him with his body. “Sammy!”

“What's the matter, Sam? Did you want to go first?” John taunted from the other side of the bed, causing Sammy to lunge towards him in fury.

“Knock it the fuck _off_ NOW!” Dean yelled, struggling desperately to hold onto his enraged brother, keep him from their angry father. Unlike the general smacking around his father gave him, especially when he was drunk, Dad had never hit Sammy. This situation was so volatile, though, that John just might do it tonight and Dean couldn't bear it.

A loud banging against one of the walls startled them all. Well, they were making a lot of noise at whatever time it was.

Sam and John backed down a bit and stood on either side of the bed silently glaring at each other, Dean in the middle as always. Still on his knees, he leaned over and switched on the bedside light, then looked at them, his family that he loved, the only security and stability in his life, as fucked up, insecure, and unstable as it was. Despite Dean's best efforts to take care of everyone, his family was tearing itself apart – over him. He shook his head, disgusted. “I think I should hit the road again.”

“NO!” both Sam and John protested at the same time.

“Don't leave me here alone with him,” Sammy begged. “Don't you do that to me again.” He looked stricken and so very young.

John stared at him and Sammy, eyes suddenly going wide as if he was seeing them both for the first time, then he pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead like he'd had a sudden bolt of pain, his face crumpling. John turned away and quickly pulled his boots on, grabbed his jacket, and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

“And _stay_ out, you son-of-a-bitch,” Sammy said angrily over the renewed pounding from the other side of the wall, which they both ignored, staring at each other.

“What the fuckin' hell is goin' on?” Dean pleaded softly, feeling blasted, shell-shocked.

“I'll tell you,” Sam said, “Sit down.”

Dean settled cross-legged in the middle of the bed, hands gripping his knees because he needed something solid to hang on to, while Sam sat near him on the edge and filled him in on the shouting, the bitter accusations, the near fist-fights, just like he'd seen tonight, that had been going on since he'd left.

“You hadn't been gone more than an hour, I was still crying on the bed, when Dad started in on me. He told me he'd suspected something was going on between us for a while...and I guess the way I was carrying on because you'd left me confirmed it for him.”

Dean remembered all too vividly the crying, the clinging onto him to the point where he'd literally had to pry Sam's fingers from his jacket one by one in order to free himself to sprint out the door...The guilt that he'd shoved under, pushed down, since he'd left his sobbing wreck of a little brother behind for his own selfish reasons surged to the forefront of Dean's mind. “I wasn't leavin' _you,_ Sammy, I wasn't. I just hadda work things out for myself.”

“And you don't think _I_ needed to work things out, too? That I needed _you_ to help me understand what we did? How it made me feel?”

Dean swallowed hard, throat and chest aching. “I'm sorry, Sam,” he whispered.

Sam looked at him, studied him, then just gave a small nod. His brother could see that he meant it, but he was telling him a simple apology wasn't going to be enough.

Sam gave a shrug that turned into a jerking shudder down his back. “Anyway,” he went back to his story, “so Dad kept harping on me, telling me how sick I was for trying to touch you, wanting to hold you...Dean, you kept pushing me away and you wouldn't talk about it, but I couldn't _help_ myself, I had to _try,_ ” Sam said earnestly. “I've never felt anything like what we...” Sam paused, ducked his head and looked at him shyly from under his long bangs, then continued haltingly, “Well, uh, so, so, he, _Dad_ just wouldn't leave me alone from then on. I was missing you so much and I was so confused because I didn't _feel_ sick, _we_ didn't feel sick to me, we never have, but you were _gone_ because of me and what we did and Dad just went on and on about it and I finally told him I knew. I told him how I've been watching him and you for years and years. I told him he was a hypocrite. If I'm sick, then he's sick, too!” Sam ran out of words, looked away, down at his hands that he had pressed tightly between his knees.

Dean sat and absorbed that for a moment, then said, “It didn't feel sick to me, either, Sammy.” The whole experience had made him question a lot of things, but only things about himself, not about the bond between him and Sam. That was something different, sacrosanct, existing and fated to continue to exist no matter what they did or didn't do.

“Dad's almost convinced me our whole fucking family is sick. You shouldn't have left me alone with him, Dean.”

Dean reached out and put a hand on Sammy's shoulder, squeezed. “I know that now. I thought I needed 'space' or whatever. I didn't know it was gonna be this bad for you. But, Sam, arguin' with Dad over me... _that_ makes me feel weird.”

“I love you,” Sam suddenly blurted out, still staring down at his imprisoned hands, like he'd captured them there between his legs to prevent himself from touching him and making him run away again.

Dean was startled. Normally, they didn't speak so openly about feelings like this. It was too mushy, chick-flicky. But tonight...tonight he supposed it was appropriate. He patted Sammy on the back, then took his hand away. “Well, I love you, too, Sammy, but – ”

Sam turned to him, leaned towards him, an intent look on his face. “No, I _love_ you, Dean, _really_ love you, and I can't stand Dad touching you anymore.”

Dean's eyebrows rose. That was a kick in the balls. He knew he and his brother loved each other, but Sammy was saying it was more than that. Now Dean felt even worse about running away. On top of everything else involved in that one sex act, he had taken Sammy's virginity. He should have paid more attention to that, to how it might make Sam feel. Also, Sammy was obsessive, just like Dad, and he should have taken that into account, too. Dean couldn't have messed things up worse, if not with the sex itself than by leaving almost immediately afterwards, if he had set out to fuck over his brother on purpose. He was such a royal screw-up. Dad was right.

“Did you tell Dad you don't want him touchin' me?” Dean asked, it was the only part of what Sammy had said that he could articulate right now, throat swollen with guilt as it was.

“Oh, Dad can go take a flying leap! He started this, not me!”

Dean sighed wearily. “No, Sam, _I_ started it. This is _my_ fault. If I hadn't pushed you to fuck me, nunna this woulda happened.”

Sam frowned. “Dean, no, it isn't your fault. You never pushed me into anything.”

Dean rubbed his forehead, rubbed at his upper lip, swallowed hard, as the guilt kept building up, trying to choke him. “Yes, I did, Sammy. I just didn't know you were gonna – huh, I can't even believe I'm sayin' this – _fall in love_ with me 'cause of it. I mean, we've been messin' around with no problems for years.”

“And I've wanted to fuck you for _years,_ ” Sam said earnestly, puppy-eyes at maximum wattage. “Dean, you _didn't_ push me. I've wanted to do more than just mess around with you for a long time, I just didn't know how to make it happen. I finally decided that day to just _take_ what I wanted.”

Dean looked at Sam, brow furrowed, unable to accept what Sam was saying. He thought his way through the memory, but despite trying to look at it the way Sammy wanted him to, he couldn't see past his _own_ feelings at the time, his desire to be overpowered and forced by his brother. Sam was telling him that he'd made his own decision, but couldn't Sam have wanted to fuck him only because Dean had been encouraging it? Probably, and if so, that meant it was still his fault.

Then Dean remembered what Sammy had said when they'd still been struggling against each other, “It's _my_ damn turn.” That changed things a little. Maybe it was true then that Sammy _had_ been intent on escalating their sex play, but out of a sense of rivalry with their father and not necessarily because of Dean's encouragement. That definitely fit in with the fighting he'd witnessed tonight, but Dean was not yet willing to give up his latest burden of guilt.

“Sammy, you decided to take what you wanted 'cause that's what _I_ wanted you to do. This is still on me, man.”

Sam laughed in disbelief, shaking his head. “ _No,_ Dean. Listen to me. I'm telling you straight up that you _didn't_ influence me.”

“Then it's 'cause of Dad.”

“ _No!_ The only way Dad fits into this is that he's a fucking bastard hypocrite who needs to keep his hands _off_ you!” Sam was getting angry again.

“So, you _don't_ see him as some kinda rival?” Dean asked. “Then what the fuck _is_ all the fightin' about?”

Sam suddenly lunged at him, knocked him onto his back on the bed, and had him pinned by the shoulders in about two seconds flat. Dean, shocked and a little excited, stared up at his brother wide-eyed. Sometime in the past month Sammy had added speed to his strength.

“I'm saying Dad's not a rival because he's never touching you again, is he?” His brother glared down at him, willing agreement from him.

That was difficult for Dean to give, since he'd never really had a say in his relationship with John.

Sam leaned closer, pressing him harder into the bed. “You won't let him touch you again, _right?_ ” he insisted.

When Dean still didn't answer, Sam's lips pressed together in a thin, angry line, his jaw muscles jumping. One hand came off Dean's shoulder and drew back, balling into a fist.

“Right, Sam, right,” Dean hastily assured him before his fucking hot little brother could pop him one and get him too turned on to think straight. “I won't. I promise. Now calm down and get off me 'fore I kick your ass.”

Sam's face and fist relaxed, but he didn't let him up. Instead he bent down to kiss him. Dean jerked his head away and Sammy pulled back in surprise.

“What?”

“He ain't gonna touch me and neither are _you,_ ” Dean replied, staring up at his brother determinedly. There was no way he was going to let Sam do as he pleased with him without seriously thinking it through this time, for Sammy's sake as well as his own.

“Why?” Sammy asked, clearly hurt.

“Get offa me,” Dean repeated, bucking under Sam's body.

This time Sammy complied. Dean quickly rolled off the other side of the bed and onto his feet. “I don't wanna hurt you, Sammy, but I for damn sure don't wanna make another mistake.”

“Mistake?”

Dean gave him an “are you kidding me” look and spread his arms out to encompass the room, recently the location of a major fight on an entirely inappropriate subject during which what Dean himself might want had been entirely ignored, completely dismissed, by both Sam and their father. That dismissal was something that had gotten lost in all the other drama tonight, but Dean remembered and he wasn't going to put up with it.

Sam rolled his eyes, made a disgusted noise, frowned, and shook his head. That annoyed Dean; Sam was now dismissing his insistence that his wishes were being dismissed. Neither his father nor his brother had taken him into consideration at all tonight, not in their fights and not in their minds or hearts, even though Sammy claimed to _love_ him.

“Sammy, you'n me are gonna talk, we're gonna do that 'workin' it out, talkin' about our _feelings'_ crap, but we ain't gonna do _nothin'_ else, not even messin' around. Not for a while. Things need to calm down and I need to know that you and Dad are respectin' what _I_ want before anything else happens between me'n you. Got it?”

Sam rolled his eyes at him again and huffily got into bed, his back to him, pointedly tuning him out. Dean looked at his brother for a moment, shook his head, then shut off the light.

“So much for family reunions,” Dean muttered softly to himself as he settled down on the other bed to try to sleep. ***


	8. of Part 1

**CHOICE MATTERS**

**Part 1 – Chapter 8 ******

So, today was another rape day.

Dean didn't mind these as much anymore. He usually ended up more-or-less intact at the end of the sessions, depending on what Alistair used to fuck him with. Today it appeared it was going to be some kind of machine, which made Dean a little apprehensive, but a machine was probably going to be better than a knife...or a Hellhound. Dean shuddered at _that_ memory. He had never liked dogs much, and getting killed by one, eaten by another, and fucked by a third hadn't changed that. Cautiously indifferent, Dean didn't plunge so much as wander off into memory...

*** Soon after Dean had cut him off, Sammy ran away.

John was off on a solo hunt, claiming the creature he was after was too dangerous for them to go with him. Dean was sure that was bullshit. This hunt, if it even _was_ a hunt, was just John's excuse to get the hell away from the toxic atmosphere between the three of them, which had only gotten worse when Dean, backed up by a very riled Sam, had told John that he wasn't going to have sex with him ever again.

Whatever the actual reason, their Dad was gone and Dean and Sam were left behind, _again_ , squatting in a long-abandoned house on the far outskirts of a small town in Minnesota. The place luckily still had well-water and a mostly intact roof, but no gas, heat, or electricity, of course.

The first night, with a rainstorm pouring down outside, Dean and Sam had gotten into another argument over the fact that Dean was still refusing all sexual contact with his brother. Since the night Dean had returned from his trip, he and Sam had been talking whenever they'd gotten a moment to themselves, but Sam still remained dismissive of what Dean wanted, which was basically messing around that would sometimes include fucking. They'd both handled a limited amount of sexual interaction just fine for a long time, and Dean didn't see why they couldn't keep that going indefinitely.

Sam didn't want to listen to Dean, though. He didn't want any limitations. Sam wanted everything from Dean, all of him, as much as he could take from him, and he wanted him _exclusively_ – no more girls, or guys for that matter, and especially no Dad. Sam wanted a full-on, monogamous lover relationship; anything less than that Sam wouldn't accept, and no compromise was good enough. In fact, Sam was angry and hurt that Dean wanted to compromise in the first place. Sam seemed to think that Dean's trying to retain some kind of autonomy for himself meant that Dean didn't love him.

It was like he and Sam were speaking different languages all of a sudden. The easy communication, so much of it conducted through silent looks, that they used to take for granted was gone, and Dean didn't know why. He just knew he couldn't back down until he and Sam had a true meeting of the minds about his role, and that wasn't happening that rainy night, either, because both he and Sam were stubborn. However, Dean should have been suspicious that something was wrong because Sam had backed off a little too quickly. They'd had the time to really hash things out, but Sam had fought with him only long enough to make Dean march off with his sleeping bag and lantern to bed-down in another room – and he hadn't followed after him to continue the argument.

When Dean had woken up the next morning, Sam had been gone, along with all his possessions except his phone lying in the middle of the living-room floor. Frantic, panicked, Dean had run all over the house, the overgrown grounds, the surrounding woods, and finally the town, looking for him – and for three days he had failed to find Sam or pick up any leads at all. It was like Sam had disappeared off the face of the earth.

Now, finally, early evening of the fourth day since Sammy had vanished, Dean accepted the fact that he had to call his father and ask for help. Stomach clenching, he called John's main number, but only reached his voice mail. He left a message telling his father to hurry back, he needed help, but left out that Sam was missing, unable to say the words. He then tried his father's other numbers with no luck. Terrified for his brother's safety, devastated, and out of options, Dean sat down on his sleeping bag on the floor of the dilapidated living room and cried.

Tears running down his face faster than he could wipe them away, Dean made fervent vows to himself and to Sammy. He and Sammy had parted on a fight, gone to bed angry with each other, and Dean swore that if Sammy wasn't dead, if he came back, he wouldn't fight with him over the kind of relationship Sam wanted. Whatever Sam needed, Dean would give it to him. It had _always_ been that way, he had _always_ provided for Sammy, and it should never have changed. He should never even have tried to change it. If he hadn't been so stubborn, so selfish, by insisting on having a say in their sexual relationship, this would never have happened. He and his brother would have slept together and woken up together, just the way Sam wanted, and Sam would still be here, safe and sound. If his brother was still alive, if Dad could find him, if Sam would only come back, then how Sam wanted it was exactly how it was going to be. Dean swore it. Eventually, exhausted and emotionally drained, he fell asleep.

Dean was awakened in the middle of the night by his father hauling him up off the floor by his shirtfront. “Where's Sam?” John shouted in his face.

“G-gone, Dad. That's why I c-called you,” Dean stammered, barely awake, struggling to get his feet under him, but before he could do so, his father's fist slammed into his face and he fell back onto the floor.

John pulled him up again. “What do you mean ' _gone_ '? He was your responsibility!”

“I know, Dad, I'm sorry,” Dean apologized miserably. His father's fist to his mouth sent him crashing to the floor again.

Dean lay dazed and bleeding from his nose and mouth, his furious father standing over him, the lantern light making John's shadow loom even taller.

“How could you let this happen? What the fuck were you doing?” John shouted at him.

Dean was getting to his feet when his father back-handed him onto the floor again, sending blood splattering onto the wall. Dean struggled to sit up, but figured it was best if he didn't try to stand. “Sleepin', Dad. I was just sleepin'. Sam packed up everything but his phone and left while I was asleep. He was long gone when I woke up and I ain't found a trace of him since.”

“Were you drunk?” his father demanded, pointing to all the empty beer cans and bottles stacked on the fireplace mantelpiece and piled around on the hearth, almost all of which Dean had consumed since Sammy had disappeared, not before.

“No! I swear!” Dean stared up at John, eyes innocently wide. He _hadn't_ been drunk, just pissed off and sleeping in a separate room, which he shouldn't have been...

Some of his guilt over that must have made it into his eyes, because his father then asked, suspiciously. “What aren't you telling me?”

Dropping his gaze, Dean admitted to the fight with Sam, to what it had been about, to leaving his brother alone to sleep. “I'm sorry, Dad,” he said again.

“Sorry? You're _sorry,_ all right,” his father snarled contemptuously, then stomped over to the door and rummaged in his duffle, getting out one of his phones and punching in a number.

Dean wiped the blood off his face on the hem of his t-shirt and listened as his Dad called Bobby Singer, his father's long-time friend and occasionally his and Sam's minder when they were kids, asking the hunter coordinator to put out an all-points bulletin on Sammy. Every hunter around the country would soon be on the look-out for Sam. If his brother was alive, someone would spot him and report his whereabouts to Bobby.

Dean could have done the same thing days ago if he'd thought of it, but he hadn't thought of it. He was so inculcated to the sealed-off world of his family that reaching outside of it, even to allies like Bobby, simply didn't occur to him, any more than calling the police had. It was much safer to let Dad handle contact outside the family.

“Got any beer left?” John asked when he got off the phone with Bobby.

Dean felt the tension in the room drop a bit, so he thought he could risk standing up without getting knocked down again. “It's in the well to keep cold.”

“Get it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dad, settled on Dean's sleeping bag with his back against the wall, quickly downed a couple of beers while silently eying him in the lantern light. Dean sat cross-legged on the floor in front of his father, trying not to squirm under his steady gaze, and apprehensively waited for more recriminations. The longer Dad was quiet and the more he drank, the worse it was going to be.

John opened another beer, then surprisingly handed Dean the bottle and finally spoke, “So, you've been putting your brother off, too? That's why he ran away?”

“Yes, sir. I think so,” Dean replied, and took a grateful swallow of beer.

“I didn't realize that you two weren't... I thought you and he...”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Dean was taken aback. “Why _not?_ I thought you told Sammy it was 'sick'.”

“Yeah, well, 'sick' is relative.”

Dean burst into surprised laughter, then quickly shut his mouth, unsure if his Dad was actually making a joke.

John gave him a rueful smile. “Dean, hunting is a hard, _short_ life. True hunters don't retire, we die bloody. If you and Sam can give each other some comfort... God knows, son, you did that for me.”

“Dad...”

“I know, I know. You're old enough now to make your own decisions and you've decided to end it between us. I accept that. But your brother's growing up and he's going to be making his own decisions soon – hell, he already _has_...” John finished his third beer and started on another.

Dean took a swig of his beer, gazing narrowly at his father as he picked up on where John was going with this. “You pimpin' me out to Sammy?”

“All I'm saying is, if you two being together keeps Sam with us and happy in the life...”

“You _are!_ You son-of-a-bitch!” Dean had already decided to do whatever Sammy wanted and he resented his father trying to horn in on his decision, trying to turn it into just another duty, yet one more family obligation he had to shoulder.

His father frowned at him, pointed his finger at him. “Listen, you little fuck-up! I wouldn't have to 'pimp you out' if you hadn't gotten us into this situation in the first place!”

“You are unbelievable,” Dean said, incredulous at the sheer gall of the man. He got up and started to walk out of the room, needing to get away from his father before he said something worse, when John suddenly snatched at his ankle and whipped his leg out from under him. Dean crashed to the floor to the sound of breaking glass as his beer bottle shattered. John was immediately on top of him, one knee threatening his crotch.

“Don't fight me, Dean. You've fucked up enough as it is. Don't go making things worse.”

Dean glared up at John but he couldn't hold the look because his father was right. Everything _was_ his fault. It was his fault that Sammy had fallen in love with him, it was his fault that John and Sam were acting more like enemies than family, and it was his fault that Sammy had run away. There was no denying it. It didn't matter what John did or said after the fact, how much of a bastard he was, the screw-up had _already_ happened and the screw-up was _his_. “I won't fight you, Dad,” Dean said, resigned.

“Good boy.” John's eyes glittered in triumph for a moment before they closed and his father took his mouth, invading him with a beery tongue.

____________________________

As the days passed by with no word on Sam, John became increasingly restless and hard to live with, not that he'd ever been easy, bitching at Dean constantly about the job he'd had to hand off to another hunter to come deal with this mess. Except that, other than the call to Bobby, his father wasn't doing a damn thing, didn't even have any plans to do anything. John went into town and stocked the abandoned house and the cool well with as much booze as he could afford and got shit-faced drunk every day. Dean's only refuge from his father's temper was to get drunk, too, so that he didn't care what John said or did to him, but he worried that when the call came that Sam had been found, if it came, he and John would be too drunk to respond properly.

Besides John's temper, Dean also had to deal with John's increasingly bizarre sexual demands. John started hand-cuffing him before sex, then cuffing him to various things around the house and yard before going at him, then tying him up with rope, suspending him by his arms until they ached and went numb, then gagging and blindfolding him. Dean had seen such things in magazines, but he'd never experienced it himself. Now he was getting a tutorial on bondage from his own father. He didn't know if he liked it or not because he was too upset about Sam, not to mention too drunk most of the time, to think about it.

Finally, after Sam had been missing for two weeks, Bobby called, and luckily the call came when he and John were mostly sober. Dean was gagged and bound on the floor on their sleeping bags, naked, listening intently to his father's side of the conversation.

“Flagstaff?!” John exclaimed. “What the hell is he doing there? No, you're right, it doesn't matter. Well, I don't give a _fuck_ what he wants, Bobby. Tell Josh to keep hold of him until we get there. He's already on his way to _you?_ Why? Neutral ground, huh? Arrogant little prick. Alright, Bobby. We'll pick him up at your place. See you in a bit. Yeah, we're leaving now. Thanks, Bobby.”

As soon as John untied the gag, Dean asked, “Is Sammy okay?”

“Yeah, he's fine. He was in Flagstaff of all places,” John replied.

“I heard.”

John finished untying him and told him to get dressed. As he did so, Dean wondered how to tell his father it was over. John wasn't going to like it, but there was no way that Sam would stay with them, no matter how much he put out, if he and John were still fucking. Finally, as they were packing up the last of their things, Dean broached the subject. “Uh, Dad.”

“Yeah?”

“I hafta tell you somethin'.”

“Save it for the car. Get a move on.” His Dad tucked one of the rolled up sleeping-bags under his arm and swung the two big weapons bags over his shoulder and headed out the door.

Dean took a last walk around the house to make sure all they were leaving behind was the small mountain of beer and liquor bottles and cans in the living room, the rest of their trash from their stay having been burned daily in the yard. Then Dean carried his sleeping-bag and his and his father's duffle bags out to the Impala. While he was stowing them away in the car, John went back inside to do another sweep.

When they were finally on the road, Dean tried again. “Dad, you know when Sammy's back with us, you'n me are over, right?”

John briefly glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah, I know.”

“And you're okay with that? There ain't gonna be a buncha dick wavin'?”

John didn't answer him, just drove on. ***


	9. of Part 1

**CHOICE MATTERS**

**Part 1 – Chapter 9**

The one physical pleasure apart from sleep that Dean was allowed was showering, and most of the time he was left alone to clean himself. Of course, Dean never told Alistair that these random, treasured, cleansing opportunities he was given acted to strengthen his resolve against Alistair's plans for him. Getting clean renewed Dean, body and mind. Showers had had that effect on him when he was alive, too. No matter how tired or beaten up or angry or sad or any combination of those he was, Dean always felt better after a long, steamy hot shower.

*** The latest car he'd stolen had run out of gas, probably due to a faulty fuel indicator because Dean ordinarily never ran out of gas, while he was on his way to meet back up with his father for a hunt. Now he was walking along the side of the road in the moonlight with his thumb out, aggravated and late.

Dean hated hitch-hiking. Not only because it was a form of begging and he despised begging, but because you never knew who was going to pick you up, which meant Dean didn't know who to be. Unless he was pretending to be some sort of official to work a case or trying to pick up women, Dean sometimes felt awkward and uncomfortable around civilians. The only act he'd honed to perfection at this point in his life was “smart-ass pussy-hound,” mainly to conceal his sexuality, but that persona was surprisingly inappropriate a lot of the time.

When he got a ride from a guy not much older than himself driving a huge, new extended-cab pick-up truck, Dean put on his nascent “mysterious drifter” persona and after exchanging names, destination, and greetings, went as quiet as Clint Eastwood. The guy, Michael, never “Mike,” chattered away at him, asking questions that Dean answered with monosyllables, grunts, or not at all.

Eventually, Michael went quiet, too, and Dean sensed increasing nervousness. The only problem with this disguise was that the cowboy days were long gone, so a quietly intense young man who exuded the confidence that came from being well armed read more like “serial killer” than “mysterious drifter.” Dean was going to have to interact.

Dean reworded information that Michael had already told him into the form of questions and tried to think about the job ahead with Dad while Michael repeated answers he didn't care about. As they talked more, however, Dean began to notice that Michael was kind of nice as well as good-looking in a blonde, rough-hewn, son-of-the-soil sort of way. Dean's plans for the rest of the night suddenly changed.

“So you live alone, huh?” Dean asked, showing actual interest now.

“Yeah, got my own apartment on the top floor of one of the outbuildings. It's kind of a sweet deal. I'm away from the folks and I can come and go as I please, but I don't have to pay rent,” Michael chuckled.

“Yeah, it does sound like a sweet deal,” Dean agreed, and then, when Michael glanced at him, he bit his bottom lip while quickly flicking his eyes up and down Michael's body appraisingly.

Dean saw Michael blink and gulp hard at that before his head snapped back to the road, his nervousness now from excitement instead of fear. Hooked another one just that quick. He ought to teach a class. Dean smiled to himself and quickly wrangled an invitation over to Michael's place for a “drink.” He would meet up with Dad a little later than they'd planned, that's all.

The Boden family farm was huge, the main house itself quite large as Dean saw when they drove past it, and Michael's home at the far edge of the sprawling property was nicer than he'd imagined from Michael's description of it as an outbuilding. Michael parked his truck inside the well-maintained, barn-like structure's lower floor, then led the way upstairs. A spacious wood-floored loft greeted Dean when he emerged from the stairway, and he was instantly jealous.

Normally, Dean didn't give a rat's ass about other people's homes unless they had a ghost or a poltergeist, but Michael was only a couple of years older than him, maybe 23 or 24 at the most, and he already had everything a young guy could want. The kitchen area had the latest appliances, the seating area had nice leather furniture, a big television, stereo equipment, and console game units. In short, the place was awesome, and Dean told Michael so. Smiling and proud, Michael shut the lights off everywhere but the seating area, turning on a standing lamp that arched over the couch. Dean took the large, neat whiskey Michael poured him and a seat on the couch. Michael sat down next to him, close but not too close.

They talked idly for a while, drank more whiskey. Dean was mildly buzzed and a bit confused at what was taking so long. Michael should have put the moves on him by now. Then, at a subtly questioning glance Dean gave him, Michael leaned back into the couch, turned his head a certain way, and Dean figured it out. Michael wanted _him_ to make the moves.

This was going to be different from Dean's usual encounters with men, but since he'd never gotten any complaints from the women he'd fucked, he wasn't worried. Dean got up on a knee on the couch and moved over Michael, their lips meeting in a clinging kiss. Within moments, Michael was flat on his back, Dean on top of him, grinding his crotch into Michael's. Dean had one hand tangled in Michael's hair, pulling his head to the side so he could kiss his neck while Michael moaned and ran his hands all over his back and ass. Dean kissed and lightly bit his way back up Michael's neck to his ear and whispered, “Seventy-five to suck you, one fifty if you want me to fuck you.”

Michael tensed and tried to pull his head away. Dean let go of his hair. They looked at each other.

“You're a _hooker?_ ” Michael asked, disbelief in his eyes.

“I prefer 'hustler,' but yeah.” Dean gave him his sauciest grin.

Michael stared at him for a long time, then said, “Alright.”

Dean kissed him, open mouthed, lots of tongue, until Michael started moaning and bucking up against him again, then he pulled his mouth away. “Cash up-front 'fore we go any further.”

“Yeah, okay,”

Dean got off Michael and watched him take out his wallet, count money, come up short, get up and find more in a drawer, and finally come back to him with his hand thrust out. “Here.”

Dean took the money and quickly counted it. One-fifty. Alrighty, then. No problem. He shoved the money in his pocket. “Thanks. Now, where were we?”

Instead of the couch, Michael led him over to the shadowed sleeping area, next to the large, unmade bed, and began to undress. Dean did the same, noting the appreciative look that flashed across Michael's face when he saw his cock.

“You have lube, condoms?” Michael asked when they were both naked, nodding his head towards Dean's duffle on the floor by the couch.

Before Dean could answer, Michael continued, sounding somewhat bitter all of a sudden. “Of course you do. Tools of the trade.”

“Actually – ” Dean started to tell him he was out, only to be interrupted.

“Yeah, why use up your own supply, right?” Michael said, still with that bitter tone. Michael pulled out the necessities from his nightstand drawer, set them on top, and then stood naked in front of Dean with his chin up, his chest out, his whole attitude announcing: “You're on my dime, buddy, so you'd better perform.”

At that challenge, Dean abandoned his plan to fuck Michael like he would a woman. Instead, he began channeling his father, his brother, their sexual aggression towards him and how he responded to it. He knew exactly what Michael wanted because he wanted the same thing. Dean stepped up to the other man and suddenly shoved him hard onto the bed, following him down.

“You'll get your money's worth,” Dean rasped, plunging his mouth down onto Michael's, kissing him hard and sucking at his lips and tongue.

Michael rapidly got with the program and his enthusiasm added to Dean's enjoyment as they made out, repeating naked what they'd been doing clothed on the couch earlier.

Dean then roughed up Michael's chest with bites and hard sucks before trailing down his abdomen and taking his hard cock in his mouth in one swift lunge. Michael gasped, jack-knifed, and Dean pushed him back down with a hand on his chest. He pinned Michael and sucked him until he could feel that Michael was about to shoot, then pulled off and grabbed his sack, stroking and tugging gently at his balls until they relaxed from their tight cling at the base of his shaft. Michael panted and groaned and writhed.

Dean then nudged at Michael's shoulder until he got the idea and rolled onto his belly, pulling himself up on his knees. Dean played with Michael's asshole for a long time, prepping him. He loved it, so he figured Michael would, too. Dean loved rimming, also, but he wasn't going to do that to a stranger no matter how much he was paid.

When Michael was begging for it, Dean rolled on a condom and slicked himself. He poised his cock at Michael's hole and entered him exquisitely slowly, letting Michael's body adjust to the intrusion. He might be being more rough and aggressive tonight than he usually was when he fucked, but Dean wasn't going to do to someone else what he knew hurt him, like jabbing his cock into Michael's ass too fast.

When Dean was finally in as far as he could go, his body pressed tightly to Michael's, Michael let out a soft sigh, “That was perfect,” he said, then wriggled his hips. “Come on, fuck me hard with that big dick.”

Dean obliged.

Now he felt like he was fucking a woman, in that he had to hold back, keep from coming, make sure his partner came first. It was common courtesy, but it wasn't something he normally had to think about when he was with a man because he'd always been the one getting fucked.

Dean figured he was concentrating particularly hard on not coming because of Michael's expectations, the fact that Michael was paying for it. Or maybe it was because this was new to him so he really wanted to do it right, or whatever. Maybe it was a combination. In any case, it became an overwhelming concern that his mind rarely strayed from.

Dean pounded Michael's tight ass in every position he could wrestle him into for what seemed like hours, even after Michael came, because Dean couldn't seem to orgasm himself. It was like a switch had been flipped in his head because he'd been blocking himself off for so long that now it wasn't going to happen.

Michael had gotten hard again so Dean kept on fucking him until he came a second time. When he finally pulled out for good, still throbbingly hard, Dean felt like he'd run a marathon, breathing heavily with sweat streaming down his body. Michael looked utterly wrecked, lying panting and spent on the bed, and that caused a swell of pride in Dean. He loved it when he did this to women and it was just as satisfying to do it to a man.

“I came twice. Do I owe you more money?” Michael asked, but it wasn't a snide question. Michael's tone was simply inquisitive.

Dean got up and stripped off the condom, tossing it to the floor. “Nah. Second one's on the house. What I need is a shower...and that ride into town?”

Michael smiled up at him. “You got it.” ***


	10. of Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artwork for this chapter is here: http://travellerintime74.deviantart.com/art/Even-then-368519669

**CHOICE MATTERS**

**Part 1 – Chapter 10**

He'd been kept in a cage for a while now, for some reason. He was still tortured every day, of course, he was just put back in the cage every night. Dean didn't see the point, since the cage didn't bother him, it didn't humiliate him or make him feel dehumanized or whatever. He wasn't claustrophobic. He actually liked enclosed spaces; he felt safe in them.  


Dean didn't know why he felt that way, what might have happened to him in the past that made cramming himself into a small area represent safety to him, but it was a good trait to have considering how much of his life had been spent in cars and small motel rooms.  


The time he'd spent sleeping in this cage had brought on the best dreams. Last night's dream had been one of home. He had to have been around four in it, but he had all his adult memories and his adult ability to appreciate where he was and what he was seeing and experiencing. Watching his beautiful, pregnant mother just going about her day, with him playing on the floor, helping her with small tasks when she asked, eating the food she made him – Dean wouldn't have wanted to ever wake up even if he wasn't going to wake to Hell.  


But a klaxon had blared, and Dean looked out from the slats of the cage, his mind still wrapped in the dream day from his peaceful, ordinary childhood before everything had burned away, and wondered at first what exciting thing was about to happen. Then awareness burst through the dream hang-over and he remembered exactly what was going to happen – pain, blood, humiliation, temptation – and he closed his eyes, pushed himself as far back into the cage as he could get, and waited to be dragged out.

*** “Sam! Sammy!” Dean shouted as he banged through the door of Bobby's large ramshackle house in the middle of the scrapyard, well ahead of their father.

“Dean!” Sam yelled from somewhere deeper in the house.

They met in the kitchen and wrapped each other up in a fierce hug that almost wiped away the horror Dean had been through since Sam had run away...almost.

Dean pulled back from his brother, holding onto his shoulders, looking him over. Sammy was tanned and appeared fit and well in his black wife-beater and jeans, which made Dean happy. “Flagstaff, huh?”

Sam nodded.

Dean let go of him, stepped back. “Why, Sammy?”

“Why did _you_ take _your_ trip? I had to get away.” Sam shrugged.

That casual, dismissive shrug pissed him off. “I had _permission!_ ” Dean shouted. “You knew I was leavin' and what I was doin'! But _you_ sneaked out on me in the middle of the night! I didn't know if you were alive or dead!”

Sam had the decency to look abashed at his tirade. “I'm sorry, Dean. I had to get away from Dad.”

Dean gave him an incredulous look. “But Dad wasn't _there!_ You ran away from _me!_ ” Dean couldn't keep the hurt from his voice, already on the edge of tears. He clamped his jaw tightly to stop them.

Dad suddenly barged into the kitchen and the room went electric with tension. Sam and John immediately squared off and began shouting at each other. Dean tried to intervene, as he always did, but he was grabbed from behind, turned around, and pushed out the door.

“Leave 'em be, son. They need to work it out on their own,” Bobby said as he kept shoving him and manhandling him all the way around the side of the house to the covered work area, Dean loudly protesting the whole way, and then pushed him down onto a chair, standing in front of him to block him from going back inside.

Dean tried to get up anyway, but Bobby pushed him back down.

“I said leave 'em be, ya idjit!”

“Bobby, you don't understand!” Dean argued. “They _had_ time alone to work shit out when I was gone, but it only made it _worse!_ ”

“Yeah, but now your Daddy knows Sam is serious about whatever's botherin' him, don't he? Sam takin' off like he done...that changed things,” Bobby calmly explained.

Dean absorbed that for a moment. Bobby could be right. After all, Dad was not only willing to stop having sex with him, but also willing to let Sammy take his place. John would never have agreed to that if Sam hadn't run away...and neither would he. Dean and his father both knew now that Sam was serious. “Maybe you're right,” Dean grudgingly admitted.

“Course I'm right, boy. Just let them two hot-heads go at it and have a beer with me.”

Bobby went over to the work area's ancient fridge and took out two bottles, opened them, then handed him one and dragged up a chair next to him. He sat down with a grunt and a sigh.

Dean took a gulp of beer, feeling calmer from Bobby's words, his presence, and said, “Thanks, Bobby.”

“Don't needta thank me for nothin' 'cept the beer.”

“For the beer, then,” Dean said, smiling, and clinked his bottle against Bobby's.

They sat there companionably, silently drinking beer after beer, for a long time. The sun had moved much lower in the sky, making the shadows of the piles of junked cars slant and elongate, before Dean heard the door slam and eventually his brother appeared around the corner of the house.

Sam looked at him grimly, jerked his head towards the scrapyard, and walked off. Dean got up and followed him. Sammy walked until they were far away from the house, surrounded by towers of partially flattened cars, before he stopped and turned to him.

“You know about Dad's 'solution'?” he asked, clearly trying to hold onto his temper.

Dean nodded, but when he tried to correct him, Sam talked over him.

“You agree with it?”

“Yeah, but it ain't _Dad's,_ Sammy. It's mine.”

“ _Yours?_ ” he asked skeptically.

Dean nodded. “All mine. I swore to myself before Dad even knew you were missin' that if you came back, I'd do whatever you wanted. No compromisin'.”

Sam regarded him with raised eyebrows for a moment, then frowned and barked out a sharp, aggravated, “Huh!”

“ _'Huh'_ what?” Dean asked, confused. He thought Sam would be happy he'd won.

“Dean, the times I tried to be with you, and when I begged you not to take that trip, when I came right out and _told_ you that I _love_ you, none of that mattered to you. But I _ditch_ you and _bam!_ ”

Dean understood Sam's anger now, but the way Sammy put it wasn't how it was, at least not for him. But was it worth trying to explain to Sam how disregarded as a person he'd felt when he was already determined to go along with anything Sam wanted anyway? No, it wasn't. Trying to explain would just bring more attention to his selfishness when what Dean desired most was for everybody to forget about it.

“You're right. I'm sorry.” Dean apologized, willing his brother to put everything aside and forgive him.

Sammy's face gradually softened and he pulled him to him, bent his head and kissed him. Dean held onto his brother tightly and let that kiss wash away the fighting, bad feelings, recriminations, fear, everything.

Sam leaned against a junker, Dean pressed between his legs, and they made out in the lowering light, wrapped up in each other, wrapped up in the sense of completeness that came from being together. At least, that's what Dean felt. However, he was coming to understand from this whole fucked-up mess that he and Sammy could experience the _exact_ same thing and yet could come away from it with entirely different ideas of what had happened and what it had meant – and both of them still be right from their own perspective.

When they finally let go of each other, Dean did it in increments, cupping Sammy's cheek, squeezing his shoulder, his hand, until he could finally bear to stand physically separate from his brother.

Sam smiled at him in the bruised twilight. “It's good to be home,” he said, and Dean heard “It's good to be with you,” because that's what “home” meant to Dean, being together.

Dean smiled back, feeling content for the first time in a long time, feeling hopeful that everything was going to work out, that his family could be together again peacefully.

They stayed at Bobby's for a couple of days, Sam and Dean mutually agreeing that they wouldn't do anything sexual while under Bobby's roof. Dad barely said a word to them or to Bobby, just drank, but Dean caught his father looking at Sam oddly on occasion, as if he was trying to see something in Sammy or he was waiting for Sammy to do something, Dean didn't know what. When Sam caught their father looking at him that way, he'd scowl at John but he didn't say anything or pick a fight, for which Dean was grateful. It was strange, but then what wasn't strange in their lives?

When the three of them headed out on the road again, Bobby having found what looked like a haunting at a processing plant in Illinois that had had a sudden uptick in odd industrial accidents, icy silence was fully entrenched as the replacement for fighting between Sam and John. This was still uncomfortable for Dean, of course, but considerably less disturbing.

Testing the waters with both him and Dad, Sam had insisted that Dean sit in the back seat with him instead of riding shotgun. Sam immediately pulled at him and gathered him into his arms. Dean let him. He lay between his brother's legs with his back against Sam's chest as Sam half-reclined against the door, one hand down inside the neck of Dean's shirt playing with his sensitive nipples and squeezing his pecs like he was groping a girl. Dean didn't say anything or try to stop him, not only because of his vow, but because he kind of liked it. Dad didn't say anything, either, but Dean saw their father's eyes on them from time to time in the rear-view mirror. ***

Dean remembered that he'd had to wait until they stopped for the night at yet another run-down motel before they got to the truly disturbing shit, but he didn't have to wait here. Hell was nothing but disturbing shit coming at him constantly from all sides, inside and out. As some kind of emotional protection, Dean longed for his two favorite dreams: the one where he was dealing out the torture and the other where he was re-experiencing his early childhood. He was aware of the contradictory nature of them, of course, but both of them gave him the same feeling – peace. However, one dream was actually attainable in the here and now while the other dream was unrecoverable, gone forever. It was something to think about.


	11. of Part 1

**CHOICE MATTERS**

**Part 1 – Chapter 11**

“No,” Dean gasped, wincing in pain as another few inches of the thick wooden baton was shoved up him. _Must be over a foot in there already,_ he thought, ass aching.

“My patience is not unlimited, Dean. If you don't make the right choice, and quite soon, I'll hand you off to one of my apprentices. You'll be on the rack for all eternity. You'll be used for training purposes until the _end_ of _time.”_ As he spoke, Alistair ran one of his straight-razors slowly, almost lovingly, down his hip and the side of his leg to his bent knee.

Dean barely noticed the shallow cut because, for the first time in a while, he was truly hearing what Alistair was saying to him and the demon's words cut him much deeper. Dean had already been in Hell longer than he'd been alive topside, and he was coming to truly _understand_ that he could be existing like this on and on _forever_. It was the most horrible thing he could think of.

Dean considered his dreams again, his desire for peace, his fragile hope that he might see Sammy once more. What was the point again in refusing Alistair's offer? What was the worst that could happen if he accepted it? That he might look bad? To _whom?_ God? He was _already damned_ to Hell. Himself? It wasn't possible for him to have a _lower_ opinion of himself.

“I...I'll...think about it,” Dean replied reluctantly. That was as far as he could go right now, but that would change. He sensed the time of capitulation was coming ever closer.

“Really?” Alistair said, sounding annoyed. “I've basically offered you the run of my corner of Hell _and_ an opportunity to see your beloved brother again and all you can say is 'I'll think about it'? Rather ungrateful of you, my boy. I should withdraw the offer...” he said, as he withdrew the baton.

“Cut the crap, Alistair!” Dean snapped. “You ain't gonna stop askin' till you get the answer you want and I said I'll think about it. That's a big deal for me!”

Alistair walked around in front of him, giving him a view of his leather-covered knees along with the dripping razor in one hand and the baton in the other. “Is that what you think? That you've just made some grand concession?” He gestured with the razor, and Dean felt the familiar spatter of blood on his face. “Dean, my boy, you're barely holding on to a fraying rope and you know it. Why won't you let go? Are you afraid you won't be good at applying the knife? Are you afraid of disappointing me like you disappointed Daddy? Do you think it's better never to try than to try and fail?”

Dean's eyes widened a bit in surprise and he was glad Alistair couldn't see his face. He closed his eyes as he felt a huge sense of relief swamp him. Alistair had it _wrong!_ If Alistair could get it this completely, fucking _wrong_ then his mind must still be his own. The times when it seemed otherwise must have just been coincidences or lucky guesses. Dean didn't say anything to Alistair, didn't correct him.

Then something disquieting occurred to Dean. If his mind _wasn't_ being tampered with and if his dreams _were_ his, then that meant that when he did give in, that choice was going to be _his._ His decision would be entirely his own. He would have no excuse. It was a very disturbing thought, and Dean distracted himself by plunging into his disturbing memories instead.

*** They ate their late, fast-food supper in silence. John and Dean silently drank a few shots of whiskey across the table from each other, avoiding each other's eyes, while Sam sat silently watching TV. They got ready for bed in silence, automatically rotating through the bathroom like they had a thousand times before. Sam silently got into one bed and John, just as silently, got into the other one.

Dean stood between the beds, looking down at his father. This was the first night under the new regime, Sammy's regime, and Dean wondered how their father was going to handle it. So far, there had been no reaction from John, no comments, simply glances in the rear-view mirror and brusquely clipped questions while ordering food, but Dean was about to get in bed with Sam and not his father for the first time since he was thirteen and that massive change was going to provoke _something_ out of their father at _some_ point, Dean could guarantee it. John regarded him expressionlessly for a moment, not giving Dean any clue how he was feeling or how bad it was going to be when he finally reacted to them, before rolling over, his broad back to the other bed. Dean turned to Sam, who gave him a half-smile and flipped the covers down, inviting him in. Dean cut his eyes back to his father for a last look and shut off the light.

The moment Dean slid between the scratchy sheets, Sammy began pulling off his t-shirt and boxers. Dean didn't know why he'd bothered putting them on. Sam leaned over him and took a nipple into his mouth. As uncomfortable as he was at the fact that Dad was awake right next to them in the other bed, Dean didn't resist his brother. He'd made a solemn vow and he was going to keep it: whatever Sammy wanted.

After sucking both of Dean's nipples until they were aching, Sam latched onto his mouth. Dean returned the kiss, his arms around his brother's neck. Sam slipped a leg between his and Dean arched to rub his cock against the blade of Sam's hipbone, getting harder as Sam's tongue invaded his mouth. It had been a long time since they'd messed around, and they'd only actually fucked once, but nothing felt awkward between them. They flowed together like currents in the same river right from the start.

Sam's mouth moved away from his to trail kisses down Dean's neck, then his tongue licked at his chest, swiping over each nipple, moving on down his body with kisses and licks and tiny sucks, copying what Dean had done to him over the years. An amused, ticklish noise was forced from him when Sam's tongue probed his navel, and Dean realized the covers were gone. Moonlight, headlights, streetlights, neon signs – the inescapable nightly illumination of every cheap motel room with inadequate curtains – revealed them now to their father's eyes. Dean didn't spare a glance at the other bed to see if John actually was watching them, however, because Sam had reached his cock. His brother held it, stroked it, lapped at the head, then slowly took it in his mouth. Dean groaned softly.

Over the years, Sammy had gotten very good at sucking his cock, eagerly learning and applying everything Dean taught him. Dean lay back and let Sammy do as he pleased with his body...at first. Then he remembered how good it had felt their first time, when he'd resisted and Sam had _made_ him cooperate. Dean's cock flexed in Sam's sucking mouth as he recalled what he'd unleashed in his brother that day. He'd taught Sammy how to kiss him exactly the way he liked and how to suck his cock exactly the way he liked, so why couldn't he teach Sam to fuck him the way he liked best? That way he could keep his vow to his brother and his bargain with their father and still get a little something for himself.

Dean suddenly curled his hips away from Sam, jerking his cock out of his mouth, and at Sam's startled sound, Dean pulled and tugged at him until he rose up over him with a confused expression. He brought Sam's head down to him with a fist in his hair and growled in his ear, “If I'm yours now, then fuckin' _prove_ it!” He let go and shoved his brother away from him.

Sam lay for a moment on the end of the bed where he'd fallen, clearly surprised, then he laughed softly. “Oh, you're gonna get it now.”

“Yeah?” Dean challenged, bracing himself, his arms outstretched to ward off his brother.

“Yeah.” Sam launched himself at him, instantly batting aside his arms and knocking him flat again. That's when everything except his brother disappeared in a blood-pounding haze for Dean. Sam wasn't kissing him anymore, he was biting and sucking at his lips, fucking his mouth with his tongue. Sam bit down his jawline, then bit the sensitive spot under his ear, making Dean cry out in pain and try to push him away, before Sam moved on to suck and bite where his neck and shoulder met, then back up to his mouth. Dean pushed at Sam with one arm and pulled him close with the other.

Sam's leg was again between his, but it wasn't something to rub against anymore, it was a threat to defend himself from. Dean clamped his brother's leg between his own so Sam couldn't shove his knee into his crotch. Sam forced his way out of his arms, grabbing his wrists and pinning them over his head while he ravaged his mouth again.

His brother was so hard, so _strong,_ arched over his body with relentless force as he was, and Dean thought he'd never been so turned on in his life. His brother dropped down onto him, the two of them connected mouth to mouth, crotch to crotch, writhing against each other. Dean wanted Sam to fuck him so badly he felt like the desire was going to stop his heart. He tore his mouth away from Sam's. “Fuck me now!” he demanded.

In answer to that, Sam put one big hand around his throat, rose up and leaned some of his weight on it. He squeezed Dean's neck, cutting off his blood and air, making sparks dance in his vision and reminding him who was in charge. Sam's other hand reached underneath a pillow. Dean thought for a wild second that Sammy was going for a knife or gun, that he'd pushed his brother way too far, but the hand only came out with a tube of lube and Sam let go of his throat. Dean coughed and sucked air.

“Keep your mouth shut, Dean,” Sam ordered, “and roll over.”

Dean immediately obeyed, wondering if Sam would rim him again, wary about asking for what he wanted given his brother's order to shut up. Besides, his brother's tongue felt so good that it didn't seem like something he deserved to have. As he thought that, Dean felt his cheeks spread and his brother was giving it to him anyway. _Sammy_ thought he deserved it. Dean moaned and spread his legs wide as Sam's sucking, kissing mouth and wriggling tongue assaulted his asshole, unaware of how long he whined and moaned and begged, delirious for more.

Without warning, Sam suddenly shoved three lube-slicked fingers up his ass. Dean uttered a half-choked groan then bit his lip against the pain. Sam finger-fucked him a few agonizing, plunging twists before replacing his fingers with his cock, sliding home fast and smooth and it hurt, it hurt, but after the first couple dozen thrusts, the pain began to fade, and Dean was able to focus on the pleasure of being stretched and filled. Sam propped himself up with his big hands splayed out on his shoulder-blades, using his full weight to pin him down to the bed as he began to power into him.

“God, _yes,_ give it to me!” Dean panted, arching his hips up, feeling wide open to Sam's long, thick cock, unable to resist now even if he'd wanted to. Sam was fully in control and Dean could tell that Sam was comfortable being in control. Dean couldn't get enough of his brother's cock or his air of confidence as he fucked him on and on, even though Dean wasn't feeling that sense of “oneness” that he'd felt the first time they'd fucked. Truly experiencing his brother's dominance was exciting enough, and Dean knew that that intensely close feeling was possible again. This wasn't going to be the last time they fucked – hell, this wasn't even going to be the last time they fucked _tonight._

Dean was near to coming, but he needed just a little more to send him over. He snaked a hand under his body and Sam immediately reared back and pulled out of him.

“No! Get up on your knees!”

Dean quickly did as he was told, pulling his legs up underneath himself until he was kneeling with his chest on the bed, legs spread wide. Sammy was back up his ass in a second, his hands on his hips, then he stopped, buried deeply inside him, grinding his cock into him, and Dean heard him flip the cap to the lube. Dean felt Sam reach under him and take hold of his aching, almost-too-sensitive cock in his lubed palm. Sam held his hand still and began fucking him again, letting the forceful movement of his body as he thrust into him slide Dean's cock in and out of his brother's now grasping fist.

Dean couldn't take much of that. He was soon shooting all over his chest and the bed. “Ah, fuck! _Sam!”_

Sam let go of his cock after a final, brief squeeze and clutched at his hips again. Dean loved Sammy pulling him back towards him so roughly. His little brother was damn strong and it turned him on so much that he wasn't going soft at all. His cock was still slapping lightly against his belly, still dripping little spurts of come as Sam fucked it out of him, but the edge had been taken off a bit so he could concentrate on and enjoy the feeling of Sammy's dick inside him without distraction from his own.

Each time Sam yanked him back, Dean ground against him as Sam bottomed out, squeezing tightly around the base of his cock, until eventually Sam's thrusts lost their rhythm. His brother let out a long, low groan, his body jerking, hands digging at his hips. Dean felt throbbing pulses, but he couldn't tell if they were from his ass or from Sammy's cock pumping him full of cum. Sam suddenly dropped down onto his back like a felled tree and lay on him breathing hard, his heavy head mashed into his shoulder. Dean tried to let his legs go out from under him, but he couldn't move. With Sam's full weight on him like this, his knees were locked in position.

“You know, our money troubles would be over if I had a video camera.”

John's voice startled the hell out of Dean. He'd actually forgotten their father was in the room. This whole deal couldn't get any more disturbing even if their father _had_ been recording them, but before he could say that, Sam spoke.

“Every time I think you've hit bottom and can't go down any lower, you surprise me,” Sam said mildly, his head still pressed to his shoulder.

“No, _you_ hit bottom and went down tonight, Sam, on your brother's ass,” John countered, a bit snidely and a little enviously, Dean thought. Then John said to him, “As for you, Dean, I see now that I was too gentle with you. Apparently, you like it rough.” There was definitely a leer in John's voice and now that he and Sam weren't moaning and groaning and slapping together, Dean could hear the liquid squelch of his Dad jerking off watching them.

Neither one of them rose to their father's provocations, though, wiped out for the moment. But Dean's cock was still hard and he could feel that Sammy's was, too. They were going to fuck again, and right away, regardless of what John said or did. Dean didn't want to provoke more fighting, but John had agreed to this and now Dean was old enough to make sure John lived up to his end of the bargain, especially when he knew he had Sam's enthusiastic backing.

Sam lifted his head from Dean's shoulder and kissed his cheek. “Roll onto your back, baby.”

_“Baby?!”_ Dean repeated, feeling vaguely insulted.

“ _Whatever_ I want, remember?” Sam said as he lifted off him and pulled out of him.

“We're gonna hafta talk about some of this, Sammy,” Dean replied as he assumed the position his brother dictated.

“Dean, you swore and Dad agreed. That's the end of it.”

Dean didn't want to get into it right then in front of John, so he shut up. ***

That _hadn't_ been the end of it, of course. Dean hadn't kept his mouth shut for long. The next day when they'd stopped at a Gas n' Sip, he'd cornered Sam in the men's room and told him how it was going to be. Dean would fully cooperate with Sam in bed, but out of bed, there would be no change in their relationship. Dean was still Sam's big brother, with all the rights and privileges appurtenant thereto; he wasn't going to relinquish his life-defining role for any reason, vow or no vow.

Sam had immediately backed down and agreed, which had surprised Dean. He'd thought he'd have to push the issue, have yet another fight over it, but apparently not. Gratified by Sam's new-found willingness to accommodate him, Dean had started allowing Sam to touch him outside of bed, to kiss him, play with and suck on his nipples, put his arms around him, show him as much physical affection as he wanted to, as long as they weren't actually in public view. Dean found that he enjoyed it all, a lot, and he had no problem returning Sam's affection. Their father's discomfort at and obvious jealousy over what he called their “lovey-dovey crap” only made it more enjoyable for them.

At some point during all the cuddling, kissing, suckling, playing with each other's fingers while they lay entwined watching television, and so on, quite apart from their more sexual activity and without Dean even realizing it was happening, he fell in love with Sam.


	12. of Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artwork for this chapter is here: http://travellerintime74.deviantart.com/art/While-some-things-change-Some-things-stay-the-same-322084657

**CHOICE MATTERS**

**Part 1 – Chapter 12**

Every night lately, just as he was falling asleep, Dean had been fantasizing that Sam was pressed up behind him, his arm around him, breathing softly on the back of his neck, and it sent him into peaceful, soul-sustaining dreams.

Shortly before Dean had gone to Hell, he and Sam had begun sleeping together again, like they had when they were younger, instead of separating after sex to sleep in their own beds. It was probably because Sam had finally stopped fighting it and accepted that he would soon be gone, that the year was almost up. Dean had secretly treasured every night in Sam's arms and had hoarded the feelings, now he was putting those memories to good use.

Dean couldn't decide if the peace he felt when he was falling asleep was worth the agony when he woke up and became aware that Sam wasn't actually wrapped around him. Some days, he thought he would die from the pain. Of course, if his pain _did_ “kill” him, he'd only be restored again when they came to bring him to Alistair for the day's torments, just the same as when he “died” from the torture itself. Dean couldn't escape Hell by dying, no matter how his death came about.

The crushing emotional pain made Dean remember the time Sammy had left for college when he was eighteen. That was yet another memory Dean didn't want to revisit, couldn't bear to hide in, but his mind kept poking at it like a tongue at a sore tooth.

The separation from his brother, both emotional and physical, caused by Sam's decision to leave the family, had been just as excruciatingly painful back then as what he was enduring now, finding himself alone when he awoke. Dean didn't think that Sam had ever understood how much he'd devastated him by leaving, and Dean wasn't sure he'd fully understood himself at the time. However, now that he had Hell's torments for comparison, he knew that Sam's betrayal ranked right up there with the worst of them.

For nearly two years after they had made the arrangement with their father, Dean and Sam had slept together every night. Whether they'd fucked or not, and most of the time they'd fucked, when they had fallen asleep Sammy had been a solid wall along Dean's back, Sam's arm around him holding him close. To say that Dean had gotten accustomed to it was an understatement. It was more like an addiction.

Then, literally one day to the next, it had been ripped from him. Just like every morning in Hell lately – it had been real, it had been needed, it had been counted on, and suddenly it had been gone.

*** “I have something to tell you both,” Sam announced one afternoon while they were eating lunch at a diner around the corner from their motel.

It was scorching outside and the diner was cool, much more comfortable than their motel room with its rickety AC. Central California was a furnace this time of year, hot and dusty and miserable. Dean wanted to get the hell out of this area, go somewhere a little cooler, maybe try to catch a case out on the coast, but they'd been stuck here on a job that kept dragging on and on and he hated it. He was itching to hit the road again, but until they could be sure that every last one of the multitude of ghosts that were haunting the old mental hospital and killing anyone foolish enough to venture inside had had its bones salted and burned, they weren't going anywhere. But the ruins of the hospital had been peaceful the last few nights they'd patrolled, so Dean was hopeful they wouldn't have to desecrate the entire cemetery before they could move on.

“What?” John asked, dragging a bite of meatloaf through a puddle of gravy.

Sam had already pushed his half-eaten lunch aside and Dean was eating what Sam had left along with his own burger and fries. He couldn't stand food going to waste. He'd gone hungry too often when they were growing up, unlike Sammy.

“Well, I've been keeping something from you for a while but it's finally come through for me and now I can tell you about it.”

Dean looked at his brother across the table. How could Sammy keep anything from him? Not only because he was Sam's brother and his lover, but because he and John kept such a close eye on Sam.

“I need you to drop me off in Palo Alto tomorrow,” Sam continued. “I've been accepted at Stanford.”

Dean froze, fries half-way to his mouth. They dropped unnoticed to his plate from his nerveless fingers.

“What? How?” John asked.

“My grades got a counselor interested in me at the beginning of my junior year. She asked me what my plans were for college. I told her I didn't have any. Of course, we'd moved on again practically the moment I talked to her, but Caroline didn't let it go. She tracked me to my next school using my transcripts and we've stayed in touch ever since. She helped me with college-prep course requirements the last couple years of high school, then she helped me fill out all the applications. I applied to ten universities across the country and all but one accepted me. I chose Stanford, Caroline's _alma mater.”_

Dad sat there silently for a moment, then asked. “And is this _Caroline_ going to pay your tuition, too?”

Smugly, Sam replied, “Full scholarship.”

The three of them sat in silence for another long moment.

“Let me get this straight,” John said, angry now. “You're telling me that you went _behind my back_ and applied for college? You're planning on _leaving_ us?”

Sam nodded. “I did. I am.”

Dean was so shocked he could hardly breathe. How Sam could have kept such a monumental thing from him was...was...he couldn't even find the words for it. He was hurt beyond his ability to comprehend. “Sam,” Dean said, his brother's name coming out as a sigh, and that was all he could say.

Sammy looked at him and his eyes were full of sadness, but it was sadness for _him_. Sam wasn't sad at all to be leaving, he was just sad that Dean was upset.

In a numbed daze, Dean only realized that he'd left the diner when the wall of heat hit him as he exited. He didn't hear Sammy calling to him, didn't hear him running up behind him, only felt Sammy's hand on his shoulder turning him to face him. That broke the daze somewhat, and he pushed his brother's hand off him.

“Dean, please, I need you to understand.”

Dean stared at him, still unable to speak, his throat so tight he felt like he was choking. He pushed Sam away from him and continued to walk back to the motel.

“Dean!”

At their room, Dean tried to slam the door in Sam's face, but his brother was right on his heels and forced his way in. Dean stalked to the middle of the room, his gaze caught by their rumpled bed, where he'd slept spooned up with Sam all last night, woken in his arms this morning, and Dean realized that that special intimacy, along with all the rest of it, was now over. Everything he'd come to cherish had been ripped away from him without warning by the one person he thought he could trust with his heart. Dean felt like a giant open wound.

“Dean, please listen to me,” Sam begged.

But Dean couldn't listen to him. Sam had been lying to him, sneaking around behind his back, for nearly the entire time they'd been together as lovers. Sam had insisted on having that relationship with him as a condition for staying with the family, all the while he'd been planning on leaving at the first opportunity.

Dean suddenly felt sick and rushed for the bathroom, slamming the door before arching over the toilet and vomiting up everything he'd just eaten for lunch. When he was only bringing up bile, Dean turned to the sink and cupped water in his hand, swished his mouth out, drank a few gulps, realized he didn't want water.

He left the bathroom, ignoring his brother, and grabbed his whiskey, uncapping it and drinking straight from the bottle.

“Don't get drunk! Listen to me!” Sam shouted and tried to take the bottle from him.

Dean swung a fist. Sam easily dodged it. Whiskey sloshed in the bottle as Dean raised it to his mouth again.

Giving up on trying to take his booze away from him, Sam said, “I want a normal life, Dean! I can't stomach turning into Dad!”

“Or me?”

“Or you,” Sammy admitted.

“Fuck off, then! You got what you wanted outta me. I'm glad I kept you entertained 'til your scholarship came through, so now you can just go fuck off with your _normal_ life!”

“That's not what it was! I _love_ you, Dean! I always have and I always will.”

Such blazing bullshit. Dean couldn't believe what he was hearing. “You don't have to keep up the lyin', Sam. It ain't necessary anymore. You're leavin'.”

“Yeah, I'm going off to college, trying for a better life. If you love _me,_ then you'll be happy for me.”

Dean took another long pull at the whiskey bottle, turning his back on Sam, refusing to look at him now. “It doesn't matter what I think or how I feel. It never has, not to you and not to Dad.”

“You've _always_ mattered to me, my _entire_ life,” Sam said earnestly, and Dean knew he was in full puppy-eye mode. He'd never been able to resist those eyes, so he kept turning his back to his brother as Sam tried to get him to look at him.

“If I matter to you, then how can you do this to me?” Dean asked, and he kept drinking, desperately trying to regain his earlier numbness because this was tearing him apart.

“I have to do this for me, Dean. I wish you would understand.”

At that moment, Dad came in the door and he and Sam instantly began yelling at each other. Dean couldn't intervene, not this time. He didn't have it in him. He was too wrapped up in his own hurt, and he knew that no matter what he did or said, Sam was leaving. Their father's bargain to keep Sam with them, Dean's own vow to make his brother happy which had prompted it, had been an illusion right from the start.

Dean brought his bottle over to the table and sat down, taking another long swallow, hearing the fight between John and Sam as unintelligible noise. He felt hollow, scooped out, but still not numb. Dean put the bottle down then went to John and shoved his hand in his pocket, pulling out the keys to the Impala without either his father or his brother pausing in their shouting. As usual, he might as well be invisible when they went at it.

Dean left the room and drove away, no idea where he was going. The road blurred in front of him, but from the whiskey or his tears, he couldn't tell. He turned on the music, turned it up as loud as it would go, wiped his eyes, and kept driving.

The deception was what got to him the most. Dean thought that he and Sam had shared everything, body and mind, the last almost two years, and he had been happier than he'd ever been in his life. It had been a revelation to him how much becoming Sam's lover and ultimately falling in love with Sam had changed him. Well, not so much changed him as _added_ to him and to his life. Dean had always loved Sammy as his brother, as his child, but the new kind of love that Sam had wanted from him and that he'd given to him at first out of desperation and later with his whole heart had ended up bringing him peace, contentment, even joy. Their love had given Dean far more than he'd ever expected to have or thought he deserved to have. He'd gotten used to that love, gotten dependent on it. He _needed_ it. Now it was gone. Sam had destroyed it.

Dean wondered if this was how Sammy had felt the time he'd left on his road trip. If so, then he understood that he'd broken Sam's heart back then because his own heart was broken now. But even though he'd hurt Sammy, he hadn't lied to him, by omission or otherwise. He hadn't tricked or used him. He'd been honest when he'd told Sam he had to be on his own for a while, and he was only gone for a little over a month. He hadn't stayed away for good, gone off and set up a new life without him. Dean had simply done what he needed to do for himself and then come right back to his family.

Sam wasn't going to do that, though. He'd flat-out said he was gone for good, out of hunting forever. He was going to get his education and then he was going to live a normal life. He was rejecting everything about Dean: his devotion to him, his feelings, his needs, his lifestyle, the job, revenge for their mother's death, _all_ of it, the whole package. From the adoring little brother determined to grow up to be just like him to the passionate lover who claimed to be in love with him, Sam was chucking all of it away. Worst of all, he'd planned to do so from the start.

Dean finally pulled the car over at some turn-out somewhere and go out of the car. The sun was setting over the estuary, the dried brown reeds rustling in the slight breeze, and while it was still hot, it wasn't as bad as earlier. The lowering sun was glinting off the patches of water visible here and there through the reeds. Dean squinted out over the peaceful landscape, not a human soul within miles, watching the red-wing blackbirds clinging sideways to the reeds and peeping their last territorial calls before night fell. When the sun was a blood-red smeary dot on the horizon, Dean sighed and got back in the car, heading back to the damn motel and his asshole father and his fucking lying heartless shit of a little brother.

When he got back to their room, only John was there. John was sitting at the table in the dark, one empty whiskey bottle and another half-empty one in front of him. Bastard had finished off his bottle before working on his own.

“Where is he?” Dean demanded.

His father took a sip from his glass, didn't look at him. “Packed his shit and left. Said he was hitching it.”

“Fuck!” Dean exclaimed and slammed out the door. He got back in the car and peeled out. He knew Sam would take the shortest, most direct route, so Dean set out hoping to find him at some point between rides. He didn't even try to call his brother; he knew Sam wouldn't answer.

Dean eventually spotted Sam walking along the side of the road in the light rain with his thumb out. It rained a little more often in Silicon Valley than in central California and Sam had gotten caught out in a middle-of-the-night shower. Dean pulled over in front of him, but Sam kept on walking past the car.

Dean got out. “I'll drive you the rest of the way,” he called.

Sam ignored him.

Dean got back in the car, drove ahead of him again, and stopped. Sam walked on by.

“Come on and get in the friggin' car already,” Dean yelled out the window.

Sam stopped, turned around. “Just go, Dean. You don't understand and I can't make you.”

“That's another fuckin' lie! Get in the fuckin' car or I'll beat your fuckin' ass right here in the fuckin' road!” Dean got out and marched towards Sam, eager for the chance to pummel his brother if he gave it to him.

“Alright, geez.” Sam followed him back to the Impala, threw his packs in the back and got in the passenger side.

Dean slipped back behind the wheel and headed for Palo Alto, stifling a brief impulse to turn the car around and take Sammy back to John. But he knew there was no way to keep Sam with them anymore. Saving people's lives wasn't enough, family wasn't enough, duty wasn't enough, love wasn't enough, sex wasn't enough. Obviously, Dean didn't have anything to offer Sam that Sam actually wanted anymore and that hurt so bad he wanted to die.

“Dad's gettin' hammered back at the motel. I take it your 'talk' with him didn't go any better'n ours?”

Sam snorted. “No. He told me if I left I couldn't ever come back.”

“So? You don't wanna come back anyway.” Just saying the words out loud hurt.

“I wasn't planning on cutting myself off from either of you forever, but that's what Dad wants.”

“Since when have you _ever_ cared what Dad wants?”

“You're right, I don't care. But how could he say that to me?”

“Oh, so now _your_ feelin's are hurt? Boo hoo.”

Sam snorted again and turned his head to look out the passenger window.

Neither of them said another word until they were close to their destination, then Dean spoke. “You got somewhere to stay?” Hell if he was going to leave Sam alone on the street, even though the rain had dropped down to a light drizzle.

“Yeah. Caroline arranged for me to stay with her friend, a guy named Matt Stanger, until I get a dorm assignment. He works at the school and has a place near the campus.” Sam sounded tired, subdued. He pulled a piece of paper out of his pants pocket.

Dean was tired, too, exhausted from driving all over the fucking state today, not to mention being emotionally gutted. He had no sympathy for Sam, who had caused it all. He followed his brother's directions to a small white house and parked in front, leaving the car running.

“Looks like this is it,” Dean said.

“Yeah, looks like.” Sam sat there folding up the paper with the directions on it smaller and smaller until it couldn't be folded anymore and then he stuffed it back in his pocket.

“Have a nice life, baby brother. Take care of yourself.”

Dean wished Sam would get the hell out of the car already before he started crying, but he could hardly shove him out. Finally, Sam opened the car door and got out, shut it, opened the back door and pulled out his packs, closed the door. Dean immediately drove away, made a u-turn as soon as he could, then slammed his foot down on the accelerator and blasted past his brother still standing across the street in front of the house. Dean drove like a bat out of hell all the way back to the fucking crappy, flea-bag motel, back to his controlling, son-of-a-bitch of a father, and tried not to think about his lying, betraying, conniving prick of a brother. ***

“Parting is such sweet sorrow...” – William Shakespeare

“Parting fuckin' hurts like a son-of-a-bitch!” – Dean Winchester


	13. of Part 1

**CHOICE MATTERS**

**Part 1 – Chapter 13**

“Oh, you're so _close,_ my boy, I can _feel_ it!” Alistair gloated.

He had reason to gloat, Dean thought, because he was right. Dean had been thinking hard lately, realizing he was locked in one of the same damned loops he'd gotten stuck in when he was alive. He fought so hard, tried so hard, pushed himself so hard – and no one gave a rat's ass. People, like his father, like his brother, either didn't care or simply expected it from him. Never a word of praise, never a word of thanks, never a similar effort shown for him.

Dean had completely lost the point of struggling against Alistair. Who cared if he gave in? No one but Alistair because no one but Alistair was around.

“Yeah, Alistair, I feel it, too,” Dean admitted, staring into Alistair's eyes.

The demon smiled hugely. “Then say the word, Dean. Say it and mean it and all of this will be over.” Alistair was so excited he was practically licking his chops.

Making Alistair this happy set off warning bells in Dean's mind, but he didn't care. There was only one other time in his life when apathy had gripped him to the same degree as it was gripping him now: the years Sam had been away at school. The fact that that sad, reckless, _wasted_ period of his life came to mind right now should have warned him, too, but he was too sick of it all to give a shit.

*** It wasn't too long after Sam left for college that Dean and his father resumed their sexual relationship.

Both of them were so miserable that Dean was just as eager to seek some tiny shred of comfort in John as John was to seek comfort in him. Dean didn't care about right or wrong or societal taboos or coercion or training or obligation or inherent inequality or any of that. None of that mattered. John wasn't making him do anything. Dean was an experienced man in his early twenties now, not an innocent thirteen-year-old kid. He was more than capable of making his own decisions.

Besides, Dean considered being with his father again a repudiation of Sam. Sam had rejected him, well then, he would reject Sam right back by sleeping with someone Sam had considered a deal-breaker: their father. Not that Sam would know. He wasn't around. Still, Dean felt like he got back at Sam a little, scored a point against his brother, every time John fucked him.

Sam had initially learned how to fuck from watching John with him, and in turn John had obviously learned how Dean liked to be fucked from watching him with Sam, because from the moment they'd started up again, John had gone at him hard and heavy and wanted his active participation in return. That strange time when Sam had run away and John had kept him passive in hand-cuffs and rope might never have happened, so completely opposite had their sex life become. Dean thought that John's temporary fetish for tying him up had been because Sam had run away and John had felt the need to keep him restrained so he couldn't do the same. But whatever the reason John had bound him in the past, he never did it again.

What John did do was manhandle him, wrestle him, pin him down, control him with his big body and commanding voice alone. John told him it was so much better, him now being a grown man and not a kid or a girl or a woman, because he could let himself go completely, absolutely tear into Dean if he wanted to, and Dean would take it and ask for more. John compared having sex with him to sinking his teeth into a steak instead of nibbling at a salad – it was satisfying on a primal level. One memorable night, they'd ended up on the floor, Dean covered in rug burns, his father's brutal thrusts having even wedged one of Dean's shoulders painfully between the bottom of the bedframe and the carpet like a chock under a door, the mattress twisted askew on the boxsprings from when they'd fallen to the floor, both of them bleeding and exhausted and feeling more like they'd been fighting a monster than having sex. John had pulled him free from where he was stuck, smiled at him, and told him, chest heaving for breath, “Dean, I swear to _God_ you are the best fuck I've ever had in my _life,_ bar none.”

Dean had felt genuinely happy for a few days after that, and John became uncharacteristically affectionate with him, putting his arm around his shoulders sometimes, kissing his head on the way into the bathroom for a shower, little things, sweet things, _Sammy_ things, but that phase hadn't lasted long and Dean missed it when it passed.

Dean being an adult changed his and John's relationship in other ways beyond the sexual aspect. John finally let Dean work cases on his own from time to time, and while his father never praised him, even though he always completed his cases successfully, the fact that he didn't overly criticize or beat him and let him continue to work alone showed Dean that he had earned John's trust.

Besides letting him hunt alone, John also let him drive more frequently, allowed him to help strategize on cases, let him personally speak to officials at crime scenes more often, even let him choose which jobs they took on occasion. It felt to Dean that John was no longer working on making him into a warrior, a soldier. His father seemed to recognize that Dean was already a warrior. Instead, John was now working on training him to be a leader.

John and Dean traveled around the country non-stop on job after job. They took on anything and everything, especially cases that other hunters turned down or gave up on. Their life revolved around fighting and killing, day after day, week after week, year after year. They checked in on Sammy from time to time, had other hunters in the area give them reports on him occasionally, but otherwise, it was just an endless, murderous grind for the two of them, sometimes together and sometimes separately, and always, behind and driving everything, was the search for the demon who had caused such havoc in their lives by killing Mary.

Then, out of the blue, Dean fell in love. She was a college girl named Cassie and she was so beautiful, fearless, and no-nonsense that Dean had been instantly smitten. He'd never loved a woman before, so everything about the situation, and her, was new and exciting and endlessly fascinating to him. Dean put John and the job on the back burner, to his father's extreme aggravation, and he was even able to set aside Sam and the tearing hurt and anger that thoughts of his brother's betrayal still produced in him. Instead of thinking about his family or his work, Dean did his level best to woo Cassie, to make her love him as much as he loved her. He'd failed.

Dean had failed because he told Cassie the truth when his father called him and insisted that he rejoin him on a hunt, no back-talk. Dean explained to Cassie why he had to go to John, told her all about the “family business.” Cassie had declared him crazy and dangerous and immediately and unceremoniously dumped him. The longest relationship he'd ever had with a woman was finished in a little under three weeks. Depressed, Dean tried to forget Cassie and just focus on the job.

When Dean met back up with his father, John was pleased to hear that Cassie was out of the picture – until Dean told him why. John became enraged that he'd spilled hunter secrets, family secrets, to a civilian he hadn't even known a month. Dean had broken family rule number one. John knocked the shit out of Dean, fucked him while he was semi-conscious, and then abandoned him for two weeks. When John caught up with him again, he'd still been pissed, and it was miserable working with him until Dean broke down and apologized. After that, nothing more was said, but the tension between them lessened. He and John continued working day and night, no breaks or end in sight, and Dean's depression began to seem like normalcy. It became Dean's baseline.

Dean accidentally ran into Sam in the restroom of a bar about six months after losing Cassie, and it had not gone well. All it had done was remind Dean of how much he'd lost when Sam had left him. He'd had something special with Cassie, sure, but he'd had with his brother something that had been _essential for life_ ...and yet not a shred of it seemed to remain.

Mourning _two_ lost loves, Dean went into a deeper depression. He began drinking even more, which was a feat since he already put away half a fifth of whiskey and uncounted beers a day. He didn't care about anything, including his own life, maybe especially his own life. Dean fought to kill, he didn't fight to stay alive, and his father didn't seem to notice the difference. He did notice that Dean was suddenly completely passive in bed. Dean didn't care what his father did to him or how he did it and he enjoyed none of it. He rarely climaxed with his father, didn't seek out women or men, and stopped masturbating. He might as well have been dead from the waist down, and he simply did not care. He stopped taking an interest in their cases or learning how to work them properly. Instead, Dean was merely the extra gun or knife or pair of fists his father needed at the moment.

John was soon fed up with him, but instead of talking to Dean and helping him figure out how to deal with his losses, since that was something John couldn't manage to do even for himself, his father had dropped him off at Bobby's, told him to straighten his ass out, and disappeared again.

Bobby did his best with him, Dean appreciated that, but nothing really helped, so they basically became drinking buddies and the grumpy old coot was hard-pressed to keep up with him. Bobby put him to work in the scrapyard, and Dean was grateful to be able to do something useful for Bobby, pay him back a little for his kindness to him. He remembered how Bobby had taken the time, on the occasions John had dumped him and Sammy on him when they were growing up, to toss a ball around with him, to let him play hookey from sparring and shooting practice and just be a kid. It was thanks to Bobby that Dean even knew how to catch and throw a baseball. Dean stayed with Bobby, paying him in labor what he consumed in booze and board, for nearly six months with no real change in his depression, until one day John reappeared to take him back on the road.

John and Bobby had gotten into a shouting match over him, but Dean hadn't wanted to hear it so he'd run off into the depths of the yard. He'd slept in a junker, then went back to the house in the morning to find John gone again. Bobby told him he'd chased his father off his property with a shotgun and Dean was welcome to stay as long as he liked. Dean was grateful for Bobby's offer and his concern, but he knew he had to leave. He couldn't impose on Bobby indefinitely. He'd called his father to come pick him up.

Once again, back to the grind. Month after month passed mostly unnoticed, even the strangest cases merely background noise to Dean. His father's shouts, recriminations, “corrective” beatings, and fucking that now verged on damagingly violent to try to force some liveliness into him had less and less of an affect on him. Dean could tell his father was nearing the end of his rope with him, and he idly wondered if he might end up the victim of a “hunting accident.” Rumors of such a thing clung to John in hunter circles, though on the rare occasions they were around other hunters in groups, no one was stupid enough to gossip in his or John's hearing.

Dean might be depressed, and he might be hurting, and he was for damn sure miserable and apathetic, but he didn't really want to die, especially not by his father's hand. He was too young, only twenty six, but mainly he didn't want to die with the rift still between him and Sam. He wanted to somehow find a way to repair what had been broken, somehow find or create an opportunity to fix things with Sammy, and he had stay alive to do that.

One bright spot amidst the gore and gloom had been John's gift to him of the Impala. His father had acquired a big, black truck somehow, Dean was never clear on the exact details of the web of favors and obligations that had resulted in John's new wheels, but he didn't care – he had his Baby.

Dean and John went to New Orleans to investigate a vodun priest who was supposedly creating zombies out of some of the ostensibly naturally deceased but actually murdered congregants of his church. They hadn't been in the city long before John disappeared one night without a word or a trace. Abandoned again, Dean had nothing better to do than do his job.

At first, Dean picked away at the case, not even half-heartedly, but then the city began working on him. It lured him out at night, and the nightlife of New Orleans was unlike anywhere else. As Dean began regularly eating good food instead of gas station microwave burritos, hanging out in active and lively restaurants and bars instead of dives and biker bars, hearing and seeing good people having a good time, his spirits lifted a little. None of the happy civilians around him knew he could and would save them at a moment's notice at the risk of his own life if some creature attacked...and that started to be okay again. _He_ knew he would, that was enough.

Dean began to make progress on his case. As he dug further into it, he found the person supplying the puffer-fish toxin to the priest for his zombie-making concoction and strongly encouraged the man to find another line of business. The man quickly saw the merits in Dean's suggestion with only a minor amount of blood loss.

Then Dean went after the vodun priest himself. That had quickly gone pear-shaped when the priest had blown the zombie powder into his face. It was a good thing Dean hadn't gotten the full dose up his nose or in his mouth. At the last second, he'd turned his head and held his breath, but he'd still gotten enough of the toxin to give him strange sensations and mild hallucinations after he'd ganked the priest.

Dean had dutifully salted and burned the priest's body, along with the bodies of his zombies, to prevent any vengeful ghosts from rising and necessitating a return trip for clean-up. When the flames died down, Dean called John to report the successful completion of his hunt, but he was unable to reach him. He left messages on three of his father's numbers, then went out on the town again. He chose a gay club because he was getting low on funds. Dean was still too uncoordinated from the zombie powder to hustle pool, but he could suck cock in his sleep.

Dean discovered that the remaining nerve toxin in his system reacted badly with alcohol when he collapsed on his way to the men's room. A couple of burly guys picked him up off the floor and, despite his protests that he was fine, took him home with them. Their names were Kurt and Nick, they were in their mid-thirties, and they were a couple. A couple who liked to add a third when they agreed on one, and they enthusiastically agreed on Dean. Dean told them he was a hustler, thinking that might change their minds, but it didn't. They wanted to pay him for his company the entire weekend. The price was right, so Dean accepted.

Dean was soon stoned out of his gourd on pot, pills, and tequila shots, with strategic snorts of blow as a counterbalance. He was also spread-eagled on their massive bed, cuffed by his wrists and ankles to the head and footboards. It was a good thing the two men were more into the clamps-and-feathers thing than harsher practices, because Dean was completely unable to defend himself, though he was too wasted to be afraid. Not that he had any reason to fear, as it turned out.

Dean ended up enjoying himself immensely over the weekend. It turned out he really liked having a cock to suck while he was being fucked, and the many motel-room nights with his father and brother when one or the other of them had been excluded from his bed seemed like wasted opportunities now that he thought about it in his blissed-out, drugged-up state. There was always the future – assuming he found his father again, assuming he could get back on speaking terms with his brother, assuming he could get the two of them to share. A lot of assumptions that didn't warrant thinking about and bringing himself down when he could be enjoying himself, so Dean put them aside and did exactly that.

He left Kurt and Nick's home Monday morning with his belly full of mimosas and crepes and his wallet full of money, along with their phone number for when he was in town again. Dean felt better than he had in a long, long time. The men had taken such joy in him that Dean had felt...loved?...well, he'd felt closer to the way Sammy used to make him feel than he had in forever. Dean had lucked out with big, gruff-but-tender Kurt and slightly smaller, adoring Nick, and instead of feeling used, or worse, Dean felt like he'd spent the weekend at a spa having every part of himself lovingly attended to.

Still unable to contact John, Dean had no idea where to go next. Even with the ample fee he'd just earned, it was too expensive to stay in New Orleans waiting for his father to show up. After the loving weekend had roused thoughts of Sam, feelings other than anger at Sam, Dean found he was unable to get his brother out of his mind, so he decided to head to California. Dad being missing again was a decent excuse for a meeting with Sammy. Then Dean got an EVP-filled voicemail from John about the danger they were all supposedly in and that sealed the deal. If there was danger, Dean was going to be at Sam's side whether his brother wanted a “guard dog” around or not. ***

**Continued in Part 2 – The Torturer's Apprentice.**


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